208 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



they were armed, and he might well have presented 

 it with a tall tale of heroism, as it was of the kind 

 that made one feel ready to meet all Europe; but 

 he frankly acknowledged that he and most of the 

 neighbours lived in fear of the Indians, and that at 

 the first word of their possible presence owner and 

 repeater sought refuge under the bed. For my 

 effort in agriculture he had the kindliest encourage- 

 ment and most soothing flattery. He wouldn't see 

 any wild oats nor smell any smut in my fields or 

 granaries after that first occasion, and always had 

 his finest word of praise ready for the pigs and the 

 cows and the horses. When I needed advice and 

 a little reassurance I always walked along the pleasant 

 side-trail and talked to him in the shack which he 

 built and which he has lived in for over twenty 

 years, and which is quite the most primitive prairie 

 home in the Qu'Appelle neighbourhood. Up John 

 McLeay's trail went also both my brothers when 

 feeling fed up with the ache of toil and the pain of 

 mosquito bites and the stress of things in general 

 on the prairie ; and our kind host had always a 

 soothing word for our ills and a pleasant yarn of the 

 days when he took three months to come out from 

 Scotland in a sailing-boat, or the days he cleared 

 his homestead down east, and the crops they gathered 

 from just an acre or so to hoard as gold ; and then 

 the splendid day, already more than twenty years 

 old, when he came West to select his homestead 

 and choose the loveliest half-section in the Qu'- 

 Appelle valley because a prudent adviser begged 

 him to make wood and water his first consideration ; 

 and how he had selected homesteads here and there 

 for one and another member of his family until it 



