Page:The Pacific Monthly volume 17.djvu/33



Vol. XVII

HE clip of a cutting axe flushed a heron from the bosom of a reedy lake and sent him soaring in slow spirals until, at the zenith of his flight, he overlooked a vast champagne. Far to the south, a yellow streak marked the scorched prairies of Southern Manitoba; eastward and north, a spruce forest draped the land in a mantle of gloom; while to the west the woods were thrown with a scattering hand over a vast expanse of rolling prairie. These were the Park Lands of the Fertile Belt—a beautiful country, rich, fat-soiled, rank with flowers and herbage, once the hunting ground of Cree and Ojibway, but now passed to the sterner race whose lonely farmsteads were strewn over the face of the land. These presented a deadly likeness. Each had its log house, its huge tent of firewood up-reared against next Winter's drift, and the same yellow strawstacks dotted their fenceless fields. One other thing, too, they had in common—though this did not lie to the eye of the heron—a universal mortgage, legacy of the recent boom, covered all.

At the flap of the great bird's wing, a man stepped from the timber and stood watching him soar. He was a tall fellow, lean as a greyhound, flat-flanked, in color neither dark nor fair. His eyes were, deep-set, and looked out from a face that was burned to the color of a brick. His nose was straight and large, cheeks well hollowed; the face would have been stern but for the humor that lurked about the mouth. Taken together, the man was an excellent type of what he was—a young American of the Middle States.

"Gone plumb out of sight," he muttered, rubbing his dazzled eyes. "An' he was n't no Spring chicken. Time to feed, I reckon."

A few steps carried him to his team, a rangy yoke of steers which were tied in the shade. Having fed them, he returned to his work and chopped steadily until, toward evening, his wagon was loaded with poplar rails. Then, hitching, he mounted his load and "hawed" and "geed" his way through the forest. As he came out on the open prairie, the metallic rat-