Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel (30 page)

Bliss—whatever it was, wherever it was—was Allison’s destination. That’s where Georgina and David Abraham were, and they had extended a sincere invitation for her to join them. Surely such an invitation—considering all that had happened and was happening—had been prompted of the Lord.

She was eager to move on. She
needed
to move on for the sake of the Dabneys and Goffs. Having given her the bed in the small shack, Ella and Joe, whose bed it was, had joined Dora and Jerry and Petie in a tent in the yard. Allison was sure their provisions, which they shared with her generously, were scant, and the trip to replace them would take a day going and coming. Their cooking was done over a campfire in the yard, their supplies kept in boxes.

A sod house was in the offing, they explained to her; after showing her where it had been staked off, they led her to the prairie area where they were, as time allowed, cutting and stacking sod for its walls. Allison had seen inside the sod barn and shuddered, thinking of humans living in a duplicate of it—a burrow, in her estimation, fit only for rabbits or gophers or hibernating bears.

With some hesitation the travelers who had stopped at Dabney’s Place offered Allison transportation. “You’re welcome to go with us as far as we’re going,” they said. “If this Bliss is where you think it is, near Prince Albert, you’ll be nearly at the end of civilization, at least for the time being. From there on it’s Cree country—”

“Oh, thank you,” she answered quickly. “But you see, I have a ticket, and surely I’ll be allowed to finish the trip. After all, the train was responsible for the injuries I suffered.”

She, the Dabneys, and the Goffs bade the visitors good-bye and watched the wagon, followed by a cow, trundle off across the prairie, growing smaller and smaller until it slipped over the curve of the earth and disappeared as surely as though the earth had opened and swallowed it. Once again Allison could look east and west, north and south, and see nothing but blowing grass.

The train tracks were a thin ribbon seemingly stretched from nowhere to nowhere. And yet, in a day or so, as soon as the bruising receded from her face, Allison would ride them to the horizon and beyond. Her heart, for some unaccountable reason, yearned for the beyond.

Ebenezer
 . . .

T
he sturdy oak-framed looking glass—hanging from a nail in the rough stud of a tar-paper shack after being transported west in lieu of the handsome but heavy French Pier mirror that was Ella Dabney’s pride and joy—revealed a less-than-exquisitely dressed Allison.

Having worn borrowed clothes for a few days, she had now donned the clothes, the blood-stained garments, that had needed soaking in order to be wearable again. The white waist had fared well enough, the suit much less so. In spite of pulling and stretching, steaming and ironing, it showed sad signs of having shrunk, of being twisted out of shape. The skirt, of first-grade cheviot lined with taffeta treasured for its distinctive rustle and interlined with crinoline, and the bolero, trimmed all around with mohair-and-silk gimp and lined with “changeable” silk, simply were not intended to be submersed in water, let alone soaked and scrubbed.

With some dismay Allison pinched and pulled, stretched and smoothed, and still it bunched in strange places, bagged in
others. If she hadn’t lost weight throughout the days and weeks of her unconventional travels, it would never have fit at all.

Ella fussed around the young woman, with a yank here, a pat there, to say finally, with a sigh, “We did the best we could—”

“I know,” Allison said quickly. “And I’m so grateful. I’ll make out just fine. The West is not devoted to furbelows and finery, I’ve discovered that.”

“We dress for utility, I suppose,” Ella said, having worn nothing but cotton housedresses for weeks. A change to gingham or percale was the best she could hope for.

Allison turned from the mirror, satisfied that the bruising on her forehead had faded; the swelling was gone, and she had been able to pull her hair satisfactorily over the injury now well healed and of little or no concern.

She had tried to express her thanks to the Dabneys and Goffs, to Ella—a mother figure such as Allison had never known—in particular. She had tried to press payment upon them, half ashamed to do so, more ashamed not to. Perhaps suspecting her limited means, they had refused.

“We don’t need money,” Ella had insisted and added with a wry smile, “but if you have any marmalade in your trunk . . .”

Ella had a hankering for marmalade; sometimes, she admitted, it haunted her dreams. To savor once again a genuine English muffin liberally spread with marmalade—heavenly!

Of course there were no oranges, little sugar. “We think we’ll find wild plums in the coulee,” she said. “Plum jam will have to do, I guess. That is, if the sugar holds out.”

Allison determined then and there to send a jar or two of marmalade to her hosts just as soon as she could. She had been impacted deeply by the sacrifices these folks were making to see their dream fulfilled. Life had held no such challenges for her.

To lose oneself in something meaningful, to see results, good ones, fulfilling ones. To rest at the end of the day with a sense of satisfaction in a task well done. To dream, and to work for the fruition of that dream. To serve . . .

Ebenezer
 . . .

Again the name—ephemeral, shadowy, fleeting—nudged her mind only to escape again.

Ebenezer. That it had something to do with someone on the train, someone who had unconsciously made a difference in the direction of her life, Allison now knew, but in a foggy way. Always the full memory of the man escaped her.

But now, constantly tugging at her mind, was the growing realization that life, after all, was not the proverbial bowl of cherries, that self was not the most important person in the world, that true satisfaction might be found in “doing unto others.”

The influence of that sketchily remembered meeting on the train lingered on; those conversations, along with the kind ministry of Ella and her family, changed Allison forever.

Another thing—the teamwork of husband and wife here on the prairie homestead surprised and amazed her. Joe and Ella, Jerry and Dora—each couple was a unit. Neither could accomplish the task of wrenching a home out of the wilderness without the other. They were united in spirit, in purpose, in effort. Each had his or her own task to do and never counted it the less important contribution.

Allison recalled the pointless existence of the women of her mother’s circle: A housekeeper ran the household, the husband ran the business, while the wife, a social butterfly, fluttered from one engagement to another, concerned more with the costume of the day than with the state of the empire or her next-door neighbor.

Surely there was more.

With her own future dim but promising, Allison’s immediate goal was to meet up with Georgina and her husband, trusting it was the door to whatever else the Lord had in store for her. Surely it would not be to continue the meaningless existence she had known; surely a purposeful future awaited. It had become her hope and her prayer.

Whatever it was, it would not be defined by a perfect wardrobe! Knowing that the train, if on time, was due shortly, Allison tugged and straightened the shrunken clothes with a will and assured Ella and Dora they had done a good job on her behalf. More she found hard to say; words escaped her as she recognized the sacrifice these people had made for her, turning aside from the mountain of work that awaited them before winter set in on the prairie, sharing what they had with her, and doing it good-naturedly and generously.

Her appreciation was expressed in tearful embraces as the train appeared on the distant horizon and bore down on them. Jerry had taken a stance a few hundred yards up the track to signal that a stop was necessary.

With the iron monster vibrating, spewing steam, impatient to be on its way, and with their ears filled with noise, the time for words was past. Kisses and hugs were hastily given, hastily received, and Allison was assisted up the high steps into the car, hastening to a window where even now Dabney’s Place was sliding past, a place poor in this world’s goods but rich in all things that counted. And now, rich in memories.

Wee-sack-ka-chack—says the Cree version of Saskatchewan’s history—built a raft and saved all the animals and birds from a great flood. He sent out a muskrat that returned with a fragment of dirt in its paw, and from it the land of today was created.

Ages and epochs passed, and settlers called the northern half the Canadian Shield, and the area to the south they called the Great Plains. Most of the Shield region was covered in boreal forest, the Plains in grass.

Where the Shield met the Plains there was a richly treed strip known as the park belt. Through it ran the Saskatchewan River, rising in the Columbia ice field, splitting into the North and South branches, flowing across the southern half, emptying eventually into Hudson Bay.

Homesteaders called it the bush. Although the frost-free season was, at best, one hundred days or so, the long summer days allowed for maximum hours of sunshine, and barring early frosts, grasshoppers, fire, and other deterrents, fine crops were possible.

The lure of this agricultural land as it became free for a ten-dollar filing fee was to draw hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the Northwest, eager to begin new lives, eventually to build a new society.

The trickle, soon to turn to a torrent, had just begun; Allison’s train, snaking its lonely way across the plains to the bush, was filled with one wave of eager land-seekers.

Knowing nothing of the forces of nature—the pressure, heat, water, wind, and volcanic action that had shaped and formed the land over seemingly endless ages—Allison saw it as empty and echoing, and felt for the first time its pull, its attraction, its siren song.

But the song and the appeal arose in her heart only as the barren lands were left behind and the first scattering of bush appeared, enchanting her as it surrounded her and reached out to embrace her. The stretching prairie, in that moment, was forgotten.

It wasn’t long until they pulled into Prince Albert, the end of the line. Named for Queen Victoria’s beloved consort and founded by a Presbyterian minister in 1866, it was a vital community for homesteaders and settlers from the beginning. Now, just before the turn of the century, with the Lands Office established and doing a thriving business, it had become an important center for supplies and a jumping-off place for immigrants seeking a homestead.

With her baggage unloaded at her feet on the platform of the raw station, Allison’s gaze took in the bustling town, and she felt the thrill of the pioneer.

Others, equally rapt and strongly focused, went their way with no thought, no glance, for the lone young woman.

Locating a hotel and obtaining a room was no problem; Allison was becoming an old hand at traveling. More tired than
she knew, she collapsed on the bed, feeling a sense of arrival, of having completed her journey. Could such a thing be? Or was it possible there was farther to go—Kootenay and the remittance men’s colony, for instance. She hoped not; passionately she hoped not.

A short rest, a scanty wash, a refreshing cup of tea, and Allison was ready, eager, to press on—to Bliss.

“Is there,” she asked the waitress in the hotel’s dining area, “a place by the name of Bliss around here somewhere?”

“Yes, indeed,” the young woman replied. “It’s about a dozen miles that way—” and her finger pointed in the general direction of east. “Fairway, Deer Hill, Regency—they’re all out that way. Families with children move into an area, and a school comes into being. The community takes the name of the school, or vice versa. You got someone out that way?”

“I don’t know; I hope so. Abraham is the name. Do you know anyone by that name? Georgina and David Abraham?”

“Sorry,” the girl said regretfully.

“Well,” Allison said, “I didn’t expect to be that fortunate—to locate them that easily. They’ve just been here a short time, a few weeks, really.”

“So what will you do about it?” the waitress said, beginning to gather up the dishes.