newspapers say, you fill out a form for this, you fill out a form for that, you fill out a form for the other thing, same as you would if the Kaiser was running things. Only free land on the continent is where we're standing, seems to me.'
'Pa! Pa!' His son Alexander came running toward the house, his voice cracking in excitement as any fourteen-year-old's was apt to do. 'There's soldiers coming, Pa!' He pointed to the north.
Arthur, his mind focused on the threat from the United States, hadn't looked back toward Winnipeg in a while. Now he did. Sure enough, as his son had said, here came a cavalry troop, small in the distance, down toward the border with Dakota. Alexander jumped up and down, waving frantically at the soldiers. Arthur McGregor waved, too, but in a more measured way. He had a much better idea than his son of what war actually entailed.
The troopers waved back. Then, to McGregor's surprise, one of them peeled off from the rest and guided his chestnut toward the farmhouse at a fast trot. He reined in just in front of the porch: a little sallow fellow with waxed mustache who lifted his cap to Maude before nodding gravely to Arthur and less gravely to Alexander, who was all but hopping out of his overalls.
'Good day, my friends,' the cavalryman said with a French accent that explained his swarthiness. 'I am Pierre Lapin, lieutenant'-his fingers brushed the single pip on his shoulder board-'of the horse. Is it that my men and I could use your well for the purpose of watering ourselves?'
'Yes, sir, go right ahead, all of you.' McGregor had to make a conscious effort not to stiffen to attention. The couple of weeks he spent drilling every year made him give an officer automatic deference.
'You are gracious. Merci,' Lapin said, and waved to his men. They all followed the path he had taken.
'Dipper's in the bucket,' Maude McGregor said, pointing to the well. Lieutenant Lapin tipped his hat to her again, which made her flush and giggle like a schoolgirl.
Unlike Lapin, who carried a pistol on his officer's Sam Browne belt, his troopers wore carbines slung on their backs and had sabers fixed to the left side of their saddles. They queued up at the well, chattering in the odd mix of English and French McGregor remembered from his own days in the Army. Not so long ago, as such things went, Canadians who used French and those who spoke English had disliked and distrusted one another. But with both groups disliking and distrusting their giant neighbor to the south even more, the older rivalry was less remembered.
McGregor went up to Lapin, who was waiting for his men to finish before he drank himself. Quietly, so Maude wouldn't hear, the farmer asked, 'Will they get this far?' 'When the cavalry lieutenant didn't answer, he went on, 'I've got a rifle in the house-use it for hunting. I'll hunt things in green-gray if I have to.'
Lapin's shoulders went up and down in a Gallic shrug. 'Whether they will come so far I cannot say with certainty. I will say, though, if they do come so far and you have not been called to the colors to resist them, be cautious with that rifle. The Americans, they take their lessons from the Baches'' — his curled lip said what he thought of that-'and the Boches, in the war with France in the last century, were harsh against francstireurs.'
'Thank you, sir. I'll bear that in mind,' McGregor said. 'But if they invade your country and you're defending your home, shouldn't matter whether you're in uniform or not.'
'What should matter and what does matter, monsieur, are not one and the same thing, I regret to say,' Lapin answered with another shrug.
A muttering in the distance, almost too deep, almost too soft, almost too far to hear. Thunder, a long ways off, McGregor thought. But it wasn't thunder, not on this fine, bright day-he realized that with the thought hardly formed. 'That's artillery,' he said, his voice flat and harsh.
'Vous avez raison,' Lieutenant Lapin agreed. 'I could wish you were wrong, but-' Yet another shrug. 'And so perhaps it grows more likely the Americans will reach this place. But if they do, they will have paid a stiff price.'
'Good,' McGregor said. 'What price will you have paid, though?'
'That is of no consequence, not to my country,' Lapin replied. His turn at the well came at last. He drained the dipper dry, refilled it, and drained it again. 'It is the price I agreed to pay when I joined the Army.' He touched the brim of his cap in half a salute. 'I thank you for the water, and I wish you the best of fortune in the hard days that surely lie ahead.' He swung up onto his horse, calling on his men to hurry and remount. They soon rode away.
More of what wasn't thunder came from the south. It didn't sound closer, but it was louder: more guns in action, or bigger guns. Both, most likely, McGregor judged. Now that the fight had started, the Americans, the Canadians, and the men of the mother country would throw everything they had into it.
With that growing rumble in the background, McGregor's satisfaction in his fields of amber grain evaporated. With his country and the United States harvesting the fruits of longtime enmity, any chance he'd have to bring in his own harvest seemed small and dim.
Instead of watching the waving wheat, he kept gazing southward, after the cavalrymen. Before long, he saw motion on the road coming up from the south. Without turning his head, he said, 'Fetch me the rifle, Alexander.'
'Yes, Pa,' his son answered. The boy thundered up the stairs two at a time and returned a moment later holding the pump-action Winchester with the careful confidence of someone long used to guns. Arthur McGregor checked to make sure he had a cartridge in the chamber, then stood and waited to see what sort of onslaught was coming.
Before he could raise the rifle to his shoulder, he realized he wasn't seeing the imminent arrival of the Americans, only people fleeing from them. Fear had almost made him fire on his own countrymen. Thin across the wheat-fields, their shouts reached him, urging him to join them.
He had a buggy in the barn. If he hitched up the horses to it and loaded Maude and Alexander and his two little daughters into it, he could be on the road to Winnipeg inside an hour, and there the day after tomorrow.
'Will we go, Pa?' Alexander asked. The sight of other folks fleeing seemed to have given him the idea that war was something more than a game. McGregor thanked God something this side of getting shot at-or maybe this side of getting shot-had done that.
He shook his head. 'No, we won't go. We'll stick it out a bit longer, see what happens.' Alexander looked proud.
More soldiers went down the road, a long column of marching infantry, some Canadian, some British, then trucks painted khaki, then more marching men. A plume of coal smoke rose from the stack of a distant southbound train. McGregor would have bet all the acres he had that every compartment on every car was full to overflowing with men in tunics and puttees. Some of them would be gay, some frightened. That wouldn't matter, and wouldn't say anything about what sort of soldiers they'd make once they got to the fighting.
The rumble of artillery went on and on. He went on, too: on about his chores. When you were forking hay or pulling weeds or shoveling manure, for long stretches of time you could forget about what your ears were telling you. Then, as you paused to wipe your face on your sleeve, you'd notice the noise again: in absurd surprise, almost as if it had snuck up behind you and tapped you on the shoulder to make you jump.
It was getting louder-and, unquestionably, getting closer. He hadn't wanted to believe that at first. When you noticed the thunder only every so often, you didn't think to compare it from then till now, or think your hearing was telling you the enemy was drawing nearer, which meant your own men were falling back.
But that was true. By the time evening came-the sun didn't set quite so late as it had at the height of summer-there could be no doubt left. The family sat down to chicken stew with dumplings and carrots in a grim mood. No one, not even Julia and Mary, who usually prattled on in spite of children should be seen but not heard, said much. The girls helped their mother wash the dishes while Arthur McGregor smoked a pipe. He checked the tin from which he filled it: Virginia tobacco, an import from the Confederate States, not the USA. That made him feel better.
He woke several times in the night, not something he usually did-if God had invented anything more exhausting than farm labor, McGregor hadn't heard of it. But when he sat up in the blackness, he heard the crash of guns, not so steady as they had been during the day, but not stopping, either.
And whenever he sat up, the guns were closer.
He woke for good in the pale gray of false dawn. One arm flopped across the other side of the bed, which was empty. He sniffed, and smelled tea steeping. Maude was up before him, then.
He put on his overalls and boots and went downstairs. A couple of cups of strong tea heavy with milk and sugar gave back some of what he'd lost in sleep. 'A lot of work to do today,' he said, as if that were the only thing
