Settlers of the Marsh by Frederick Philip Grove Page A

, late in the fall, he could get a building up. He would buy horses then; he needed hay.…
    Amundsen acted as agent for the absentee landlords who held the hay-land. Niels had to see him.
    As he had expected, he found the man on the field, a quarter of a mile north-west of the yard, embedded in the bush. Ellen was driving the team of colts while her father was picking stones off a newly brushed strip of land.
    â€œYes,” Amundsen said in reply to Niels’ enquiry. “I have two quarters left. Good quarters, too; the southern half of twenty-one, just west of Lund’s. Lund has spoken for one of them; but he has no money … The permit is fifteen dollars a quarter …”
    â€œWell,” Niels said, “I’ll look it over. I shall let you know by to-morrow night. Too bad, though, to let the Lunds go without hay …”
    Amundsen shrugged his broad shoulders, looking at the ground and smiling a deprecatory smile. “That is as it is. I cannot give the hay away. Do you want it for yourself?”
    â€œI am in partnership with old man Sigurdsen,” Niels replied. “I myself have filed on the north-west quarter of seven, five miles south.” He took care to speak so the girl would hear it.
    â€œThat’s so? Well, it’s good land. If you are steady …” Ellen’s horses pulled. “Whoa!” he called. “I suppose we better move on.” And he clicked his tongue.
    For a moment Niels looked after him. He chafed at the man’s complacency, at his imperturbable self-assurance, his very neatness and accuracy.…
    His eyes fell on the girl; he saw her again as he had seen her two and a half years ago. That perfect poise, that forbidding scrutiny seemed to hold him at a distance even now. His mere thoughts of her, the fact that she had figured in his visions of the future, seemed like an intrusion, like the violation of an inviolable privacy.…
    With a sinking heart he turned and strode off across the clearing.…
    All around, the bush stood trembling in green. On the berries and drupes of saskatoon and plum lay the first blush of purple.…
    Niels camped on his claim, cutting willows for fence-posts and staking off his land.…
    He worked all the time. When he was too tired, from one kind of work, so that his muscles ached, he simply changed over to another and grubbed stones out of the ground on what he had already fixed upon as his future yard.…
    Even on Sundays he would walk about in that big, rustling bluff of aspens, picking out the straightest trees to be cut for his buildings.
    The southern part of his claim was covered with comparatively small growth; for one of the marshfires that broke out every now and then had encroached upon it, some fifteen years ago, consuming everything that would burn. For no apparent reason—perhaps in consequence of a change of wind—the fire had stopped short of that tall, majestic bluff which now stood dominant, lording it over this whole corner of the Marsh.
    To the east, there was much willow; though even there, on a rising piece of ground, ten acres or so of primeval forest remained like an island.
    West and north of his claim there was sand. Nothing but low, scrubby brush intervened between the claim and the cliff of the forest along the creek.
    Niels lived in a continual glow of excitement. He worked passionately; he dreamed passionately; and when he lay down at night, he even slept with something like a passionate intensity.…
    Life had been flowing placidly for a year or two. His dreams had receded as their realisation approached. But now, in the first flush of reality; now, when all that was needed seemed to be a retracing in fact of what had already been traced in vision: now that vision became an obsession.
    Morning and evening he walked over to Sigurdsen’s place for water, milk, or eggs—a distance of a mile and a half. These walks became something of a ritual.