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Kids had their own perception of Archie. Adults saw a small man,
stocky and below average height, whose mild accommodating manner
made him somehow smaller. But kids saw a large man. They sensed the
power in his arms and fingers and the endurance in his broad frame.
And they identified with him because he'd left home at the age of
twelve to become a cowboy.
Archie had a plan when he scrambled aboard a freight train, pulling
out of his hometown of Listowel, Ontario. He outlined it to older
non-paying passengers in the freight car and they laughed, but he
had to invent all sorts of unorthodox schemes in the telephone
business and most of them worked. His cowboy plan worked. He was
riding freights to Chicago to get a job in the great Chicago
stockyards. He figured that big cattlemen must come to the yards. He
would meet them and talk himself into a job. The older hobos laughed
but withina year Archie was riding the ranges of Colorado, learning
the tricks of handling cattle and horses, and the rope tricks he
performed at community concerts.
Like most men who followed the trail, Archie kept following it over
distant horizons, and eventually he came to Wyoming and took part in
the last big roundup of wild horses. 87,000 mustangs were captured
in three years. By the 1920s the boss of that roundup was one of the
most famous cowboys in the world. He was Tom Mix, star of western
movies which were shown in the Westlock hall.
From Wyoming Archie drifted on to the Canadian prairies. In 1912,
when he was nineteen, he was in Calgary and worked with the rodeo
performers who put on the first edition of that classic western
show, the Calgary Stampede. By the 1920s the famous founder of the
Stampede, Guy Weadick, was an AGT agent just like George and Bob's
mother. At the request of the government he kept a public
long-distance telephone in his ranch home near High River, and the
one-phone station was called officially Stampede.
After the Stampede Archie went to the coast and sailed for the far
east, but even on the high seas he was a cowboy. He went as a hand
on a cattle boat.
Then his adventuring spirit took him to gold rush country, where he
made a living handling horses. He freighted mining supplies in
northern British Columbia and drove a stagecoach in the Yukon.
When war broke out Archie joined the army, but was soon a cowboy
again. Heavy guns were still moved by horses. When his experience
became known he was put in the Artillery, just in time to supervise
the breaking of a trainload of artillery horses "recruited" in the
foothills of Alberta. Few armies have ever had such a bunch of wild,
undisciplined recruits, but Archie broke them to the harness and
went into battle with them.
When Archie came home from the war he had an eye out for some more
permanent job, one that still offered lots of outdoor work and
travel. So he traded the spurs of the cowpuncher for the climbing
spurs of the telephone man and got on with AGT. When the position of
District Plant Inspector was created in Westlock in 1922 Archie was
first in line, and that's how he happened to be in his workshop now,
winding green wire and waiting for the storm to end. As he worked he
picked and chose stories from his colorful career. The boys
listened, and Archie listened too, to the wind. He noted that it was
losing its sharp cutting edge.
Five o'clock struck, and another wrestling match with the doors let
George and Bob out into the deepening dusk. It was the supper hour,
the most important of the day for Mrs. Selfridge. A teen-age girl
came in to mind the switchboard so the agent-chief operator could
leave the clack and jangle for an hour and have supper with her
family. It was a time set apart, to which she looked forward, and on
which the boys, in years to come, would look back with fondness.
Archie soon laid off winding the green wire and started home for his
own supper. But he didn't travel as the crow flies, supposing any
sensible bird was out in such weather. He made a detour to a
farmhouse at the south edge of town - all of four blocks away - to
confer with the companion who'd go with him to pick up the pieces
thrown about by the storm. On pleasant days of summer Archie would
drive his Model-T Ford on maintenance trips and liked to take George
or Bob for company, but the car ran in fair weather only. Any storm,
be it snow, be it rain, could make the roads impossible. In the
present state of the elements Archie needed a light sleigh with a
team of strong horses. He needed a resourceful driver who could help
him make repairs. And he needed a companion who rejoiced in the
challenge of rough weather, and made jokes when things went wrong.
When Archie thought of all these requirements he thought of Dios
Smith, and Dios knew Archie would be coming. He hadn't called to say
so but among kindred spirits there is a communication beyond
technology. When Dios heard the first catlike whine of the wind he
had put down his Family Herald and gone out to the barn to check the
sleigh and the harness and the horses. AGT allowed Archie to hire a
team and driver in emergencies, and Dios was paid six dollars a day
for this service. However, he gave much more service than that. Dios
had left the farm for some years to be a telegrapher with the Grand
Trunk Pacific Railway and rose to be western manager. But city life
confined him. He longed to be back where he could fish and hunt when
he felt like it, and could go into the tall timber with his rifle
and bag the family's winter meat supply. So he'd returned to his
pioneer homestead on the edge of Westlock, and since the technology
of the telegraph was so much like the telephone, he gave Archie
professional help when they went together, into a storm-tossed
landscape. Dios never thought of charging for this expert service -
(anymore than AGT thought of paying him for it) - because he had the
pioneer spirit; if he had a skill that could help the community, he
felt an obligation to use it.
So Dios was a useful companion, and as for being cheerful and
entertaining, you never knew what he'd do next. Archie laughed as he
thought of the last meeting of the Masonic Lodge. It proved to be a
very long one. Dios decided eventually that the meeting had outlived
its usefulness but still the brothers wouldn't stop talking. So he
slipped out, went next door and rang the town fire bell. The members
of the Lodge also belonged to the Volunteer fire brigade. While they
hastily adjourned the meeting Dios walked home chuckling.
He chuckled as he opened the door for Archie. Smiling down from his
full six feet he held out a strong hand. Shake the hand of Dios
Smith and you'd recognize strength to boost a team of horses through
a drift, or hoist a fallen crossarm from a snowbank, or winch a
broken pole to the upright position and lash it to the stump.
They agreed that Dios would bring the sleigh around to the shop
later in the evening and they'd pack supplies for an early-morning
start. They speculated on what time that would be. Like doctors they
listened to the hard breathing of the wind and detected unmistakable
gasps of weariness. Dios had been listening to prairie winds since
1903, when he'd come as a boy pioneer from Illinois, and had a few
years on the telephone man.
"I guess six o'clock," said Archie.r>
"Archie, you always were a pessimist. I make it five o'clock."
"Too bad you can't ring the firebell and shut off the storm," said
Archie.
"I'll try if you like," said Dios with a deep chuckle.
"I'm scared to ask," laughed Archie, as he let himself out and
started home, meeting the wind face to face. In his writings Archie
was often a nature poet. He respected nature, in its beauty and in
its force, and responded to its every mood. Perhaps that's why
nature had never beaten him. Even when a blizzard stopped the trains
running to Athabasca Archie had strapped on snowshoes and clopped
his way to The Landing along the railroad right-of-way repairing the
telephone line as he went. He had tried skis, which were new and
popular, and whose fans derided snowshoes as old fashioned, but he'd
found that snowshoes worked better over drifts and tangled brush.
There'd be a pair in the sleigh tomorrow. Once, at least, he'd have
to leave Dios and the sleigh on a country road and make a side-trip
on his own. He practiced the chopping leg strokes of the snowshoer
as he strode home to a cottage he'd named Trail's End, to signify
the abode of a retired cowboy.
When Archie reached his own door two delightful perfumes leapt out
to mingle with the chill night air. One fragrance was of roast beef,
on the back of the stove, the other of apple pie, hot and fresh and
cooling against the kitchen window. Archie smacked his lips in
appreciation. Then he planted an appreciative kiss on the mouth of
the young cook. Then he turned his attention to the one-year-old boy
tugging at his trousers. Wishing to be recognized was Gordon, first
of the new generation of Hollingsheads.
Archie sat Gordon on his knee, and turned on the radio, hoping for
some dinner music to go with the roast beef and pie. Archie powered
the radio on the principle that nothing ever be thrown away. He had
taken seven depleted batteries, too weak for telephones, and
connected them in series. Archie's radio required six volts. It
would play on four 1'/2 volt batteries if they were new. At the
moment, seven depleted batteries were adding up to six volts.
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