Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (21 page)

The speaker’s face was a little grim as if he had specific situations, even tragedies, in mind but, out of thoughtfulness, refrained from speaking of them to the newcomer.

“Like snake bite—” Tierney offered, half-strangled at the very thought of snakes.

“Canada has very few snakes,” Will Ketchum reassured her, “and we’ve seen none as far north as our area. Other than garter snakes, that is.”

“North . . . we’re not going south from Saskatoon, then?”

“No, we are about thirty miles to the north. In fact, our place borders on the bush. You’ve heard of Canada’s bush, I suppose?”

“Aye.” Tierney didn’t think it was the time to burst out with, “And it sounds grand tae me! I’ve had aboot all o’ this pancake I can take!”

“I had this opportunity,” Will Ketchum was explaining, “to take over a homestead that was going to be left vacant. This family wanted to sell . . . couldn’t take the isolation, the work, the emergencies. They lived in a soddy, of course, while they settled in. I guess it was too much for the missus, perhaps for all of them.”

“And ye?” Tierney couldn’t help but ask, anxiously.

“Oh, we don’t live in it, not now. About the first thing I did, as soon as weather permitted, was to build a frame house. Buster here was a baby when we arrived, and the soddy was so crude; I couldn’t bear for Lavinia and the child, my son, to live for long like that. One has to admire people who do. Have you ever been inside a soddy, Miss Caulder?”

“Na, na. I dinna have the opportunity.”

“You haven’t missed anything, that’s for sure,” Will Ketchum said, and the grimness was obvious now. “But,” he continued, “there are many gracious, well-bred women who submit to such an indignity, as Lavinia did, and do it quite willingly, perhaps even cheerfully. However—” Will Ketchum hesitated, then continued, “my wife’s health hasn’t been quite the same since those months. It was winter and we were so terribly shut in; one could almost say it was traumatic . . . a very trying time. Buster, though,” and he smiled down at the rosy child, “survived, and thrived. One in every five children,” he added soberly, “doesn’t make it. At least those are the statistics I’ve heard. There are many, many graves dotting the prairies. We’ve been fortunate—”

Perhaps he noted Tierney’s shiver; perhaps his finer instincts told him he’d gone too far. At any rate his face cleared, and he said, more lightly, “We have a substantial home now, Miss Caulder, and that’s one of the reasons—that, and my wife’s, er, condition—that we need domestic help at this time. We are so grateful you’ve come. And come such a long way . . . Scotland, I understand. As if I couldn’t tell by your accent.” And a glimmer of fun touched the finely molded, slender face.

“Aye,” Tierney said, nodding. “A toon called Binkiebrae.”

“Binkiebrae. As strange on the tongue as some of our names hereabouts: Buffalo Pound, Elbow, with its nearby Eyebrow Lake, and Findlater, to mention a few. Even Saskatoon sounded strange to an Easterner.”

“Is that what you were?”

“Mrs. Ketchum and I are from England, originally. At least we were born there and came over with our parents, who settled
in Ontario. Eventually,” he said a trifle wryly, “we found it too tame, or at least I did. I suppose you’d say I have the heart of an adventurer. It was either Saskatchewan or the Yukon. Lavinia—and I don’t blame her—vetoed the Yukon. So here we are.”

Master and maid looked at each other companionably. The little give-and-take had done much to allay Tierney’s anxieties, and she felt ready to leave when Will Ketchum pulled a watch from his pocket and glanced at it.

“I suppose we better get on our way, Miss Caulder,” he said. “It’s going to be a long, long day. We’ll only make it if we get right on the road and keep at it steadily. At that, it’ll be dark when we arrive, even though the days are getting long and dark doesn’t really settle until almost 10 o’clock. Later on it’ll be close to midnight. Makes for short nights. That’s good, I suppose, when one considers the amount of work that has to be done while the weather permits.”

That workload, Tierney thought—already a little sympathetic—accounted for the definitely worn look on the man’s face, a face that was, she judged, more patrician than common.

Will Ketchum—with a brief acknowledgment of his responsibility for Tierney’s hostel bill—paid it, while Tierney went to the room to throw her possessions into her bags. She turned to find him at the door, ready to carry them downstairs and to the wagon.

Following that lean back, shoulders already bowing from heavy work, Tierney realized she was following a total stranger and leaving the only security she knew—the hostel itself, and Anne—with no hesitation.

Anne! Tierney stopped in her tracks. There would be no way of saying a proper good-bye to Annie.

“I’ll be jist a minute,” she said and turned aside to the desk, where she requested a piece of paper and a pencil. What was there to write except that her employer had come for her, urged getting on the road immediately, and that she must leave Annie to her own devices? She couldn’t, Tierney realized with a stab of regret, honestly and comfortingly assure her friend that she
was leaving her in the hands of God and would pray for her.
Pearly—where are you when you are needed!

“Mr. Ketchum has come for me,” she scribbled, “and—”

Turning to Will Ketchum, she asked, “Where can my friend write me?”

“Our post office is Fielding—”

“Eight miles from the hoose,” Tierney recalled.

“Ten. It’s the nearest neighbor who is eight miles from us.”

“You won’t be gettin’ mail verra often then,” Tierney said, and she added that important bit of information to her note.

About to leave the only familiarity she knew, Tierney had to restrain herself from reaching to the clerk, gripping him by the hand, and bidding him an emotional farewell. Instead, she folded the note and handed it to him, with no trace of the emotions she was feeling. It would have helped . . . it would have spelled
finis
. . . if Anne had been there and they could have experienced a normal leavetaking.

“Will ye please see that Miss Fraser gets it?” she asked. Then she turned away, closing the hostel door behind her and feeling a loneliness she hadn’t known since her good-byes had been said in Binkiebrae.

As soon as she was out of sight the clerk opened the note, read it, refolded it, and went about his day as though Tierney Caulder had come and gone and made no impression on Saskatoon whatsoever.

T
he groaning complaint of the wagon as they rolled out of Saskatoon and headed north sounded final, very final indeed. With every turn of the wheels, the last thing that resembled familiarity was left behind. There was only prairie ahead; prairie, prairie, and more prairie. There was no reality but prairie.

It was a very large wagon. All her life Tierney had been accustomed to conveyances designed for much smaller loads than wheat. Though it was early July and threshing time was a couple of months off, a few ancient kernels danced on the wagon floor in cadence with the jiggle of the rig, in a crazy rhythm all their own.

High above, Tierney was perched on the spring seat, which tended to slant toward the heavier weight of Will Ketchum at her side. Sandwiched between them, looking up occasionally to study her face, was Buster; it was a right squeeze.

“I’d have brought the buggy,” Will explained, “which would have been more comfortable, in some ways—except that its
seat is even narrower—but it would have meant one of us had to hold Buster. This way, he can get down into the back of the wagon, move around a little from time to time, play with some things we brought along, and lie down and take a nap when he needs to.”

Sure enough, there was a small bed of blankets below their feet, and a few toys lay scattered about, doing their share of rattling with the vibration of the rig.

“Then, too,” he continued, indicating the boxes in the rear of the wagon bed, “I needed to get certain supplies, and the wagon allowed for that. There are a lot of things we can’t get at Fielding. It has a basic general store and of course a post office, but other than that, there’s not much. Certainly no luxuries—”

“Luxuries?” Tierney couldn’t help but murmur. To a “puir Scottish lassie” it sounded wonderful but too good to be true.

What would be counted luxurious on the frontier? Most anything, Tierney presumed, considering the distance it had to be shipped by train, dragged by Red River Cart, drayed by wagon, hauled in one way or another.

“You wouldn’t call them luxuries, in most circumstances, in ordinary times,” Will Ketchum explained, while Tierney searched the horizon for some form of life and Buster casually swung his feet back and forth.

“The chocolate creams, first of all,” Will Ketchum said, enumerating present luxuries. “Just a little treat for my wife, something she loves and can’t buy locally. And washing powder. Ordinarily you wouldn’t think of washing powder as a luxury. But here, where most all soaps are made by hand—lye and lard and ashes, not a pleasant mixture to mess with—that case back there of fifty half-pound packages of Roseine Washing Powder will be just as welcome as the five-pound box of chocolates.”

“Fifty!” Tierney marveled, at the same time conjuring up the unending wash days they represented. Wash days in which she would play a big part; perhaps, with Mrs. Ketchum not well, the entire part. One thing about wash day on the prairie (in her mind’s eye Tierney could envision long lines of clothes flapping
briskly in the wind and sun), garments would dry in no time at all. Except in winter . . . what did one do with wet clothes in winter?

Her thoughts were interrupted when Mr. Ketchum moved the reins into one hand, and, with the other, reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small box.

“Medicines . . . drugs . . . these are things we can’t get in Fielding, except perhaps a basic cough syrup. This,” and he held up the package, “I was afraid might break back there in the box, rattling around with the other stuff.” And sure enough, urging the team into a trot, the boxes shifted and clattered as the wagon increased its bouncing over the grassy clumps of the prairie.

“We are so far from a doctor, you see. With Lavinia’s delicate condition, I’m concerned she won’t have the proper care. Someone recommended Dr. Barker’s Blood Builder. The three B’s of birthing a baby.” Will Ketchum seemed to have trouble twisting his tongue around the wordy description of the item in his hand. “Have you heard of it?”

“Na, na. But then, everything back home is different. There’s muckle . . . much here that’s new to me.”

“It says here,” Will Ketchum flourished the box, “that a few bottles, taken in the spring, will prepare the system to stand the heat and corrupting influence of hot summer days.”

“Cor . . . corrupting influence?” Tierney managed. It sounded dreadful.

“And ward off sickness. I admit it seems unbelievable, but modern science is coming up with some great advances. Such as ether, for pain. Would to God it would be available for Lavinia when the child is born.”

Will Ketchum spoke with some vehemence, and Tierney felt certain his wife had experienced a difficult birth where Buster was concerned.

“When is the new babby due?”

“In the dead of winter. Probably means getting myself to Saskatoon in a snowstorm, if she’s to have a doctor. There’s none
at Fielding—you haven’t officiated at the birth of a baby, have you?” Will Ketchum’s voice quickened with hope. “Ah,” he said, deflated when Tierney shook her head, “it was a dim hope.

“Buster was born just before we came, and Lavinia’s mother was there, and a midwife too, so we haven’t lived through this isolated-birth experience before. But we’ve lived through two winters on the prairie, and I am, by now, very familiar with them . . .” Will Ketchum’s voice faded away, but his tone was grim and his face just as grim.

“This is another reason it will be such a comfort to have you with us.” Will turned his gray eyes on Tierney, and they were full of gratitude. “Can you imagine pulling out in a sleigh or cutter, in the dead of winter, roads more than likely snowed in, heading for town, never knowing just when, or if, you’ll get back, and leaving a woman in labor, alone?”

No wonder the man wanted medicine to build up his wife, assuring good health for her and the child. Tierney reached for the small box and read aloud from the wrapping, “‘Physicians tell us that one in every twenty persons is infected with poisonous microbes.’”

One in twenty—infected. Tierney shuddered, hoping earnestly that she was among the fortunate nineteen.

“It is universally conceded,” Will Ketchum said thoughtfully, having just read all about it, “that 75 percent of the diseases with which the human family suffer today are produced by poisonous germs in the blood. If that’s so, then this blood-builder might work miracles of a sort. It’s to be hoped, anyway. Certainly it’s worth the seventy-five cents I paid for it.”

“Seventy-five cents!”

“It’s a large bottle. It also says that taken in the fall it braces the system to stand the blasts of winter. Spring or fall, it’s effective.”

“The corrupting influences of hot summer days . . . the blasts of winter.” Tierney, bemused by the words and the thought, quoted the nostrum’s promise and pledge and wondered why she didn’t feel more relieved and encouraged than she did.