Free Fruits of the Earth by Frederick Philip Grove Page B

boasted only afifth-rate boarding house. Abe heard high praise of Blaine’s work, his only trouble being that, with increasing age, he found it difficult to secure a school. Westerners hold experience and expertness in small esteem; they prefer the young girl who will dance and gad about. “Too bad,” the inspector said. “There isn’t a better man to be found for rural work.”
    Abe made up his mind there and then that Mr. Blaine was to be the teacher of his children.
    But so far there was no school. The district must have at least five settlers before he could move in the matter.
    As winter came, Hartley built a two-roomed shack on his claim, of old, half-rotten lumber, some of it mere box-lumber, half an inch thick. He put no foundation under it, but propped the corners up on railway ties placed at an angle. There the structure perched precariously through the winter, the wonder being that the February winds did not blow it over. In the spring of 1907 he covered the outside with tar paper tacked to the walls with a network of lath. He had brought a stove and put a flue-pipe through the roof.
    Soon after, Nicoll came to Abe’s one day, about seed-oats. Abe and Bill were at work, filling the loft of the barn with hay against the spring work. Nicoll at once climbed up, reached for a fork, and helped for an hour or so.
    â€œSay, Abe,” he said after a while, “I’m going to have a new neighbour.”
    Abe, who stood on top of the load, looked up. “Who’s that?”
    â€œFine, upstanding sort of man. Name’s Stanley. He’s got only one arm; the other was caught by the belt of a threshing machine and torn clean out. They took him twenty miles to the hospital. A wonder he lived. A big fellow, your build, though not so tall.”
    â€œGreat news,” Abe said. “Where is he going to locate?”
    â€œA mile north of my line. East of the trail.”
    â€œAny children?”
    â€œSix. One boy, five girls. The boy’s thirteen.”
    â€œNicoll,” Abe said in sudden elation, “we’ll get that school!”
    â€œWe surely shall.”
    Again the blessing did not come singly. East of the new Stanley homestead, where building operations began at once, another Ukrainian settled down, a small, determined man with a reddish-brown moustache on his Slavic face, his name Nawosad. More, two miles south of Nicoll’s Corner somebody was building a sod-hut. This proved to be a young Mennonite by name of Hilmer, a quiet, well-built, almost handsome lad, so far unmarried. His clothes were black, down to his shirt. He fenced a small corral for the two oxen with which he started to break land. He lived in complete isolation, though, when spoken to, he answered with a ready courtesy which sat quaintly on his broken English.
    At once Nicoll’s Corner became the social centre of the settlement. Nicoll had drawn a shallow ditch along the south line of his yard, bridged, in front of his gate, by a culvert. North of the fence, a wind-break was beginning to grow. There, of an evening or a Sunday afternoon, the settlers would assemble, sitting on the culvert, their feet dangling in the ditch; and all affairs that concerned the district were discussed, besides many questions concerning God and the universe. Only two men appeared rarely: Abe Spalding and Jack Hilmer.
    And there, in the summer of 1908, the school district was formed.
    By that time it was known that Abe planned to buy the section north of his holdings; rumour had it that he was gettingwealthy. He had had a bumper crop last year and was building concrete pig-pens. That Hudson’s Bay section, then, must form the north-west corner of the district; which placed the south line at the “first” ditch, half-way between Nicoll’s Corner and the Somerville Line. Hilmer’s claim would be just within the district. According to law they could include twenty square miles. That brought