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Updated: June 27, 2025
Then I mopped my eyes, took one long quavery breath, and said out loud, as Birdalone Pebbley said Shiner did when he was lying wounded on the field of Magersfontein: "Squealer, squealer, who's a squealer?" I found the big wagon-box filled with our things and Olie sitting there waiting, viewing me with wordless yet respectful awe. Olie, in fact, has never yet got used to me.
As they leaped into the frost-rimmed wagon-box and caught up the reins, the half-frozen team sprang away with desperate energy, making the wagon bound over the frozen ground with a thunderous clatter. In every field the sound of similar wagons getting out to work could be heard. It was not yet light.
Bundled again in the soft quilt, he sat in the wagon-box, brooding. For he had divined, with the instinct of the savage, that if the shack on the rise before them would find a faithful friend in him who sat beneath the wavering cross, it was threatened by the presence of a dangerous foe the man just come to the shanty saloon by the river.
The wagon had been "blocked up," that is to say, the wagon-box raised in its frame or bed above the axles, with blocks driven underneath, to lift it above the level of the stream.
These he carried out to the car and was dutifully stowing away somewhere down in the back seat, when he happened to look up and catch sight of me as I swung by in my wagon-box. He turned a sort of dull brick-red, and pretended to be having a lot of trouble with getting those parcels where they ought to be. But he looked exactly like a groom. And he knew it. And he knew that I knew he knew it.
All this time Tim Jones had been dutifully holding the satchel, which he now deposited at Ethelyn's feet, and then, at James' invitation, he sprang into the hinder part of the wagon-box, and sitting down, let his long limbs dangle over the backboard, while James sat partly in Richard's lap and partly in Ethelyn's.
As he looked up he saw that a third head and shoulders had risen above the edge of the box. He saw a face incredibly wrinkled, framed in long, straggling grey hair. The bright eyes twinkled merrily. "Hello, Sam!" "Musq'oosis!" cried Sam, recoiling. Fearful of other surprises, he hastened to look in the wagon-box. There was nothing more in it save their bedding and grub.
"What do yer make o' that out thar?" he asked sharply. "'Tain't a human, is it?" Sikes straightened up with a start, and stared blankly in the direction indicated. Apparently he could perceive nothing clearly, for he reached back into the wagon-box, and drew forth a battered field-glass, quickly adjusting it to his eyes.
Having carried out this suggestion, the two shovelled steadily, with short intervals of rest, for three quarters of an hour, the dark pile of grain in the wagon-box rising gradually until it stood flush with the top. Good it was to look upon, cold and soft and yielding to the touch, this heaped-up wealth from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the mighty West.
"You'd think from the look of this country," said John to Alex, "that we were the first ever to cross it." "No," said the old hunter, "I wish we were; but that is far from the truth to-day. This spring, before I started west to meet you, there were a dozen wagons passed through the Landing on one day every one of them with a plow lashed to the wagon-box. The farmers are coming.
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