Settlers of the Marsh (29 page)
During the preliminary investigation a doubt had arisen as to his sanity. He protested strongly against that suspicion. He was perfectly sane, perfectly responsible for his actions, so he asserted, when he shot the woman; he would do so again should the occasion arise â¦
But the court appointed a lawyer for him: in capital cases a plea of guilty is valueless.
The lawyer felt that this trial might be the making of his career. He went himself into the Marsh and questioned a good many people: neighbours of the accused, Bobby, Mrs. Lund, Ellen Amundsen, Hahn, Nelson.
Thus, on the day of the trial, there appeared some twenty persons subpoenaed by the defence. The crown had only one witness as to matters of fact: Bobby Lund who had heard the shots and seen the prisoner with the gun in his hands. Apart from that it rested its case entirely on circumstantial evidence which was, indeed, amply strong enough.
The prisoner showed considerable impatience while his counsel conducted the defence. The indictment read for murder. He admitted his guilt. What more was there to be said?
But the case went its course as prescribed by law. The court, seeing that the prisoner appeared to be almost anxious to incur the maximum penalty, that of
death by hanging
, was all the more inclined to be exceedingly careful, to weigh every testimony: as to the prisoner's antecedents, his character, the many good deeds ascribed to him, and the character of the murdered woman â¦
The young lawyer made the most of every favourable circumstance.
By the time the case was ready to go to the jury, no onlooker could have any doubt any longer as to the outcome. An acquittal was impossible; but so was a conviction on the charge of murder. The jury found the prisoner guilty of manslaughter with attenuating circumstances and recommended him to the mercy of the court.
The verdict read for ten years in the federal prison, with hard labour â¦
A
FEW MILES NORTH
of the great city of the plains there rises abruptly, out of the level prairie, the brow of a hill. It does not look imposing from a distance.
But as, coming from the city, you approach it, driving perhaps in a car, and as the hill rises before you, it is apt to take on, in the impression it makes on your imagination, much larger proportions than its natural dimensions would warrant.
That impression is due to the sinister suggestiveness of the work of man. For the brow of the hill is crowned with a group of buildings of truly Titanic outline.
A perpendicular wall rises up, fifty feet high, many feet thick: a smooth wall, built of limestone blocks, stretching for several hundred feet from east to west, and forming, behind, a perfect square by its enclosure. In the centre of the south end there is a gate, wide and high, but completely closed by steel bars four inches apart. A man, armed from head to foot, always paces the arched gateway behind.
On top of the walls, at every corner, there stands a small tower from which, also on top of the walls, there stretch two parapeted walks at right angles to each other, reaching halfway to the centre of each side of the square. Each of these towers offers, when such is needed, shelter to two men who, armed with rifle, revolver, and sword, walk back and forth, back and forth on their beats. Every few hours they are relieved, others mounting guard, day and night.
Yes, when you approach that hill, you cannot get near it without being challenged. Men on horseback patrol every possible approach; their mounts being swift and strong. If you are alone in your car, you may be allowed to pass unquestioned: a single person can hardly be the bringer of any danger. If there are two or three of you, you will have to state your business before being allowed to proceed on the last half mile of the journey. If a crowd is with you, you will be turned back or at least detained. Should you, by any chance ignore the challenge, your car, disabled, will run into the ditch. In any case, before you reach the walls, every eye is watching for you; every move of yours is being followed. The report of your coming had preceded you, no matter how fast you may have travelled.
Altogether, the impression these precautions make is that of a terrible, implacable grimness, like that of doom.
Inside the huge enclosure which is thus protected against any unauthorised approach, you divine more than you see: half a dozen buildings which harbour
the prison
, the shops annexed to it, and the offices of the administration.
Outside, nestling against the talus of the hill, there are two, three large houses, brickbuilt: the residences of warden, physician, chaplain.
Behind it, north of it, a little town grovels at its feet â¦
S
OME TWO HUNDRED OUTCASTS
spend from two to thirty or forty years of their lives within that enclosure, at labour which brings them no return.
As, in the morning, they file out from the dormitoryâtier upon tier of steel-barred cells where they have spent the night alone between three walls, for in front of the steel-bars which form the fourth wall a guard paces up and downâyou are apt to shudder at sight of these unfortunates who walk along in single file, in groups of ten or twenty, silent, accompanied by a guard.
When, at noon, they return from the shops, silent again, in groups of ten or twenty, and in single file, they pass, in the huge kitchen which occupies the basement, along heated steel shelves on which a bowl waits for each one of them, filled with food to be taken to
the cell
and to be eaten there in silence, in solitude, and yet not in privacy â¦
After an hour or so, they file out again to the shops â¦
And yet, even here a human heart beats, human sympathy plans the welfare of others: the heart of the warden.
There was a time when the prisoner trembled or scowled at sight of an officer: that time is past.
To-day, when the warden appears, most of the prisonersâthose for whom there is hope, hope of a future outside, or of manhood in some form insideâmost of them smile.
The warden is a fearless man; he goes unarmed. He is the friend of the unfortunate. He has a way with him which gains their confidence.
I
T WAS LONG
, very long before he gained Niels Lindstedt's confidence. But he did not give up; and gain it he did. He spoke to him often during the first two, three years ⦠After that, prisoner number 187 often, as often, spoke to him.
It was the warden who made him think, remember about the past. It was the warden who slowly, slowly made him see that he was not an outcast, a being despised for what he had done. It was the warden who told him that he, too, placed in the same circumstances, might and probably would have acted as Niels had acted ⦠It was the warden who held out hope that perhaps within another two, three years ⦠It was the warden who corresponded for him with Bobby Lund â¦
No, said the warden, Bobby Lund would never dream of accepting the farm as a present; he had his own farm; he was looking after Niels' stock; after his land; he was holding it in trust against his return ⦠It was his, Niels', duty to go back to this land â¦
It was the warden who spoke to him of Ellen â¦
A
FTER THE FOURTH YEAR
Niels attended evening classes conducted by the schoolmaster of the village: high school classes. He learned something of French and Latin, of Algebra, Geometry, Science ⦠He acquired a vocabulary which would enable him to read real books. He was often puzzled by the abstruseness of it all. Finally he was amused. He learned to laugh at man's folly in puzzling out such curiosities of the mind ⦠What had it all to do with the real problems of life?
But he kept at it. He even passed examinations.
And one day in his sixth year, the warden entered the blacksmith shop where Niels, at his own request, had been employed and told him that he had succeeded in his intercession with the minister of justice: the end of Niels' term of confinement had been fixed for the spring of the following year, limiting the total time he had to serve to six years and a half â¦
O
NCE MORE
, during the latter days of April, Niels was on his way from Minor to the farm in the margin of the Marsh, walking. It was daytime. He had dropped off the train at noon.
Four or five miles from town he found things so changed that he could no longer follow the old-time trail athwart the sand-flats. An almost continuous settlement covered the formerly wild land over which the trail had angled. He had to go straight east, to follow roads or road allowances. Where they were not sandy, he sank to his ankles in mud. The thaw-up had just been completed.
When he reached the Range Line, he was six miles south of his farm. This was the middle of what had been the northern part of the Marsh.
The Marsh itself was also changed. Formerly the Range Line trail had followed a sandy, gravelly ridge swinging east and west. The road followed a straight line now, being graded wherever it led through lowlands, flanked by ditches which were drained by huge master-ditches running crosswise and carrying the water to the Lake.
Right at the corner, where once there had been nothing but swamp, lay two prosperous farmsteads close together; and nothing but the hedgerows of swamp alder which bordered the fields reminded of the Marsh as it had been. They, too, being deprived of the water they needed, would soon disappear â¦
Half a mile north another prosperous farmstead: a new farm house, with porch and sleeping balcony, and a huge, up-to-date barn which dwarfed the landscape round about â¦
Still further north the hovels of German and Icelandic settlers had been replaced by new buildings, some of them painted, some unpainted, but all of them bearing the imprint of truly Canadian settlements.
Niels felt intimidated. This prosperity which had invaded the Marsh was unexpected; the old pioneers had receded to the margin of civilisation; a new generation had taken hold. The change was not entirely welcome: he was of the old generation which had been evicted. On almost every farmstead he saw a garage: cars had always been his pet aversion â¦
The old familiar bluffs had been cleared away. Fields stretched in their places. About the yards straight-lined plantations of imported trees framed the clusters of buildings.
This was no longer the bush land he had loved â¦
He came to the corner of the section on which his own land lay. He stopped and put his bundle down to look about. For a moment he was not even sure it was the section ⦠And yet, a lump rose in his throat: there, in the evening sun, ahead of him, stood the bluff, still bare of leaves, but towering and dominating the landscape all about. No barns could dwarf it â¦
Beyond, the cliff of the forest still fringed the creek.
He looked east.
A mile away, in the very margin of the bush which, many miles wide, bordered the west shore of the Lake, a smaller farmstead became visible to his searching eye: that was the old Bates place, the place he had bought for Bobby in the long-ago past ⦠Yes, there was a small house, log-built so it seemed, a little stable, and two or three other small buildings, all of logs ⦠That would be Bobby's establishment. Bobby was married.
And ahead: where the small grove of second-growth aspens had marked his own line to the west, big, towering trees stood, a narrow strip of them, between road and fields, quiet in the evening sun â¦
He picked his bundle up and went on.
To the west, too, there were farmsteads, two in the open sand-flatsâlog buildings, theseâhow could any one make a living there? One, in the margin of the bush that fringed the creekâthis one a large, ambitious establishment. That must be the old Sigurdsen place? â¦
He went on and came to his corner.
He looked at the fence: it was in good order: here and there rotting posts had recently been replaced.
Again a lump rose in his throat: he had come to a gap in the young bush fringe which he had spared when he cleared his land: through it he saw horses grazing along the edge of the field which lay black, ridged, duly fall-plowed. They were Percherons, pure-bred; he knew the breed ⦠And ⦠and ⦠was not that aged mare there ⦠that lifted her head and gazed at him ⦠was not that Nellie?
Putting down his bundle, he climbed the fence. Tears were trembling in the corners of his eyes as he approached the horse, his hand outstretched. But she eyed him warily; and with a sudden motion which fully betrayed her identityâa peculiar throwing of the head, chin upward, while her ears flicked back flat on her headâshe scampered away, ten, twelve younger horses breaking cover, out of the bush, and following her.
Niels laughed; his laugh was shot with tears â¦
He returned to the road and went on.
There, ahead of him, was a small gate in the fence. He did not know it; it was new.
Curiously he approached. A white sign was fastened to the gate-post by its sideâa sign with blue letters ⦠It bore the words “Post Office” as its legend.
He saw that a path led from the gate through the bush fringe, up to a little house ⦠Should this ⦠should this be the shack in which he and Bobby had lived in the past which was now so remoteâthe shack that had first been built for old man Sigurdsen, dead and buried these ten years and more? And who might be living there now?
But that remained to be cleared up later â¦
He went on.
Yes, there was the big gate that led on to his place; with the stile by its side; just as he had left it. His heart began to beat faster, faster â¦
Then the vista opened on his yard ⦠There stood the buildingsâgranary, stable, cowshed, implement shed, pig-pen, milk house, and ⦠dwelling ⦠There was the horse-lot, the garden behind the house, the cow-enclosure north of the entrance, in the bluff â¦
Yes, there was one thing he felt sure of: no matter what else the future might hold in joy or sorrow, this would be home: his refuge, his hermitage â¦
Slowly he stepped over the stile.
As of old he went all about the place, looked into the granary where grainâoats and barleyâwas stored; into the stable, empty but for one old, old horse, a Clyde that stood, blind and lame, in his stall; into the pig-pen where half a dozen pigs came grunting and sniffing to meet him; into the milk-house where tin pails were inverted over stakes driven into the earthen floor, scoured and shining ⦠All was as it used to be.