It has been told how the superintendent of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company almost lived on the line, nursing business with the solicitude of a mother doing her best for difficult twins. No spacious private car tended to make him feel like a monarch of all he surveyed. The nearest approach to winter luxury was the stove in the freight conductor’s caboose. If the superintendent wanted to make the most of his operating force, he could count some of the section men twice--first as maintenance-of-way men, and secondly as way freight agents at the sidings which, as already remarked, furnished more stops than stations.
One bitterly cold night in February, 1897--our first winter on the baby road--we were coming down from Dauphin to Gladstone and Portage La Prairie, when, as we approached Glenella siding--a place whose hopes were linked with the name of Lady Mann’s sister--the engine’s sighing betokened a probable halt, for which force would be no remedy. Billy Walker, our first and faithfullest engine-driver, was at the throttle, and managed to induce his leaking horse to crawl into the siding. We were thirteen and a half miles from Plumas and from the possibility of wiring to Portage la Prairie for a fresh engine. The other locomotive of the system was at Dauphin. It was thirty below zero in God’s free air, and the witching hour of midnight was written on the watch. It was unsafe to sing “We won’t go home till morning”.
Near the siding was a recently-arrived settler who, we knew, had a team of horses. We roused him and he promised to drive me to Plumas. Sitting in the bottom of a wagon box, set on a home-made jumper sleigh, we drove off, over the trailless snow, with never a star overhead to give us a pointer; the driver saying he knew the way, and his passenger muffled to the forehead, solemn as the grave.
The driver gave signs of being almost as dead as the engine; but as he re-asserted that he knew the way to Plumas, he was allowed to pursue unquestioned the wiggling tenor of his way across the flat and hoary plain.
Doubt arose in the passenger’s mind. Somehow, it seemed that instead of going southeast towards Plumas we were making southwest for Neepawa, and that, after awhile, instead of being on the open prairie we should enter hilly, timbered country where the going would be more difficult, and direction impossible to maintain in the leaden gloom. To my doubts the farmer was indifferent, probably not being awake enough to appreciate what was said. After about three quarters of an hour I charged him with heading for Neepawa, and then he threw up his hands and confessed he knew not where we were.