MAN ON THE QU'APPELLE TRAIL 21 



He had just delivered his first load of the season's^ 

 new wheat. Three nights before, by lantern light, he 

 had backed his horses to the wagon and hauled it 

 twenty-five miles to the railway at Indian Head. His 

 stay there had not been conducive to peace of mind. 



To reach the rails with a heavy load in favorable 

 weather was simple enough; it merely required time. * 

 feut many such trips would be necessary before his 

 crop was marketed.^ Some of the farmers from beyond 

 the Qu'Appelle would be hauling all winter; it was in , 

 winter that the haul was long and cruel. Starting at 

 one, two or three o'clock in the morning, it would be 

 impossible to forecast the weather with any degree of 

 accuracy, so that often they would be overtaken by 

 blizzards. At such times the lack of stopping-places 

 and shelter in the sparsely settled reaches of the trail 

 encompassed the journey with risks every whit as real 

 as pioneer perils of marauding Indians or trailing wolf- 

 packs. 



Snow and wind, however, had no place in the thoughts 

 of the lonely farmer at the moment. Such things he 

 had been used to ever since he first homesteaded; 

 this long haul with the products of his toil he had been 

 making for many years. What immediately concerned 

 him was the discouraging prospect of another wheat 

 blockade instead of any improvement in conditions 

 which had become unbearable. With the country as 

 full of wheat as it was this year it required no great 

 gift of prophecy to foretell what would happen. 



It was happening already. The railway people were | 

 ignoring completely the car-distribution clauses of the 1 

 Grain Act and thereby playing in with the elevator I 

 interests, so that the farmers were going to be just I 

 where they were before at the mercy of the buyers, | 



