Hilda nestled the baby into a more comfortable position in her arms as she walked along the road. The day was just too pleasant, too beautiful to leave the baby at home again with Grandma.
Next to the seeded field by the road, she could see the long strips of black in the stubble where her husband and father-in-law were plowing the summer fallow. It had been a good spring after a harsh winter. The crops were seeded in time, her husband had said; now the rest of the work had to be done as they waited for the first good rain.
It was a strange country, this Canada, this Alberta. It was almost too vast, almost too primitive for her. The weather could be harsh and cruel, or pleasant and rewarding. Even though she had been here less than two years, she had learned that. But the people were friendly and her new relatives were kind, although they seemed to live so far away, not like the distances between neighbours in the part of Europe she still referred to as back home. She was still not accustomed to the wide variety of nationalities.
She reached the approach to the pasture gate, turned in, and opened the barbed wire gate slowly with one hand because the baby was now fast asleep. The renting of this pasture for their cows had been necessary because of the newly plowed field that had just been seeded on their home quarter and on which so many of their hopes now rested. The pasture began one mile down the road and across from their own buildings and land. It became Hilda’s or Grandma’s job, starting when the grass began to grow, to drive the cows to the pasture each morning after milking, and get them home each evening. At night they stayed in the small night pasture close to the barn. Although the rented pasture itself was quite narrow, it ran along the road for another half mile to the quarter-section line-fence so that the cows could be one-and-a-half miles from home at the far end of the pasture.
That’s where they must have been today, for they were nowhere to be seen. Hilda followed the curving, well-defined path the cows had made past the first bush of willow clumps and stopped. Finding a comfortable shady spot at the base of one of the willows a little ways from the path, she laid the sleeping baby down carefully. “No need to carry the baby further,” she thought. The cows might be just over the next prairie knoll or behind the next poplar bush, and it would be only a few moments until she returned. The baby slept peacefully as she looked back again.
She crossed one prairie knoll after another where the thick mat of hard prairie grass had been violet with crocuses only a few weeks before, but the cows were almost at the furthest end, lying contentedly, chewing their cud. She called to them as she approached, but they only stared for a few moments before the old black cow with the white star on her forehead got up and started slowly for the path toward home.
She brought them together, six cows, two yearling heifers, and two steers that were to help pay so many bills, when she became aware of a new sound. The gentle nose-clearing snort of one of the horses, the creak and click of a buggy: someone was coming down the road. Not knowing why, she ran to a small thicket of poplars to hide until it had passed. It was old Billy Porter, a bachelor from down the road. She didn’t know him, but Reinhold had said he was harmless, even if he was odd. She had heard him talking out loud to himself twice before when he had passed the yard, once when she had been working in the garden, He seemed to be mumbling to himself again today, half-bent over the lines as the team and buggy moved slowly toward town. Once he even seemed to chuckle, almost oblivious of his surroundings.
She started the almost unwilling herd toward the gate again after he passed. Their full, bulging sides and the warm afternoon almost seemed to make the cows walk more slowly than usual.
Suddenly a new thought struck her—the baby. Could Billy see that small white bundle from the buggy seat? Perhaps the baby had awakened and was crying. Would he hear that different sound? What might he do?
She hurried the cows along, her heart beginning to beat anxiously. She could not see those willow bushes, or the buggy now. Other bushes and knolls obscured the view. Her ears strained to catch any sound above the rhythmic stepping of the cows’ feet, and the swishing of the tails, but she could hear nothing. He must have stopped. Perhaps this very instant he was carrying that small white bundle back to his buggy.
Further ahead lay another gentle rise. Surely she would be able to see at least the road from there. Anxiously she scolded the cows to walk faster, prodding them with a stick she had picked up. She could see the buggy now. It was past the gate, but not too far. He should have been further by now, shouldn’t he?
There was one more hollow with a slough to circle, one more knoll before the willows. She was praying now, half silently, half out loud. The cows were not used to hurrying; their same slow pace angered and frustrated her. Minutes seemed like hours before they crested the final knoll before the willows.
She ran past the cows, who stopped, but then, seeing the open gate ahead, began out of habit to continue leisurely toward home. Gasping as she reached the willows, a moaning cry of anguish escaped her. The baby was gone! She looked around hurriedly, yes this was the place. The baby was gone.
Running toward the road, she struggled to think of what to do. Moaning, crying, praying, she saw the buggy continuing well up ahead; he must have quickened his pace, he seemed too far ahead. Could she overtake him? Then what? Icy fear added to her anxiety.
Her husband. Across the seeding. Not too terribly far. He would know how to cope with this sudden unbelievable event.
She crossed the road and the fence and began running for the strips of black, far across the seeded field. She looked for the shortest way. Poplar branches clawed at her face as she hurried through bushes, buckbrush, and wild roses which scratched her legs and tore at her clothes.
The horses and plow were reaching the end of the field far ahead. Waving, shrieking, crying, almost exhausted, she ran toward her husband. He turned on the headland and stopped for a second. Sensing some emergency, he jumped from the seat of the plow and began to unhitch the horses.
“The baby—he took the baby,” she half-cried, half-shouted, in German as she neared him. Gasping, almost incoherent, she poured out her disjointed, scarcely comprehensible story to her puzzled, disbelieving husband.
He tried to calm her. Old Billy Porter wouldn’t take the baby, wouldn’t hurt her anyhow. Perhaps he had only taken her home to Grandma. They could overtake him soon; everything would be all right.
Quickly he unharnessed Flora and tied the other horses, while explaining to Grandpa their urgency. Reinhold lifted Hilda onto Flora’s broad sweaty back. Fastening the halter rope into the bridle and around Flora’s neck as reins, Reinhold jumped up behind Hilda, banged his heels into Flora’s sides, and they began bouncing back toward the gate by the road.
Reinhold dismounted when he reached the road gate and opened it, leading Flora through. To the north, the cows had reached home and were standing by the barn. Billy Porter and his buggy were out of sight. A quarter of a mile to the south was the pasture gate where this sudden, awful event had happened.
On a sudden impulse, and against the protests of his hysterical wife, he sprang back on Flora and headed south toward the pasture. He just wanted her to show him the exact spot first, he said.
As they reached the open gate, she sobbingly explained how the baby had been sleeping so soundly, how she had laid the baby in the shade of the willows just ahead. Almost simultaneously, they both sighted the patch of white at the base of one of the willow bushes to which she had just been pointing. Flora, too, perked her ears forward to that spot.
Hilda slid from the horse, and crying loudly with arms outstretched ran to the still-sleeping baby. Abruptly, almost roughly awakened, the baby began to cry too, as if she sensed the anxiety of her mother. A silent tear ran down Reinhold’s cheek as he watched his wife hug and kiss and squeeze and soothe the baby.
“The wrong willow bush, I was looking at the wrong willow bush,” she explained ashamedly as she turned to him. “It was on the way back, over there. It looked like the right one. I was hurrying.”
Reinhold smiled as he put his arm around her waist. It would take time for her to become more trustful of people again, to forget the hurts and horrors of the past. Then, leading Flora, they turned together toward the path that led to the dusty road and home.
A class of Grade 5 students was given the assignment to write the story
of the barn in this photograph. These stories were then given to Walter.
He responded with the following:
Dear students of Mr. Kauffman:
I enjoyed all your compositions. Some of you were very close in your ideas of the owner of the barn, some were rather far out, but I still enjoyed them all. Some of you have very fine imaginations and ideas and that’s good.
Anyhow, to answer all your remarks, I finally decided to let the old barn tell its story to you, at least as much of it as I know. So here goes: