Above the chimneypiece hung an enlarged photograph of her husband,
taken a couple of days after his wedding. Mr. Barker had faced the
camera with the same brutal complacency which distinguished all his
actions. He smiled grimly, thrusting forward his heavy lower jaw,
inviting inspection, obviously pleased to exhibit himself as a
ferocious and untamed animal. Through the sleeves of his ill-cut black
coat the muscles of his arms and shoulders showed bulgingly. The
ordinary observer, looking at the photograph for the first time, would
be likely to reflect: "Here is a ruffian who needs a licking, but he
has not got it yet."
"How's paw?" said Mamie.
"Las' time I seen the old man he was paralysed drunk, as usual."
"Yes, he would be that," assented Mamie indifferently.
After this, conversation languished, and very soon the visitor took
his leave. When Mamie handed to him his hat she said awkwardly, "You
never told me good-bye"; and to this indictment Dennis replied
laconically, "Holy Mackinaw! I couldn't."
Those who know the wilder portions of this planet will understand that
all was said between these two weaklings who had loved each other
dearly. Dennis returned to the bunk-house. Mamie ran to her bed-room
and cried her eyes out.
Within a week the camp knew two facts concerning the newcomer. His
name was--Dennis! And he had loved Tom Barker's dough-faced wife!
Tom's selection of his first instrument of torture indicated subtlety.
He bought from a Siwash Indian the most contemptible-looking cur ever
beheld at the inlet, and he christened the unfortunate beast--Dennis.
There was a resemblance between dog and man. Each, in the struggle for
existence, had received more than his due share of kicks, and the
sense of this in any animal manifests itself unmistakably. And each,
moreover, exhibited the same amazing optimism, which is, perhaps, a
sure sign of a mind not quite balanced.
Dennis, the dog, followed his new master wherever he went. Tom would
introduce him with the remark, "His name is Dennis, _too_." And
if Dennis, the man, happened to be present, Tom would swear at the
dog, calling him every evil name which came to the tip of the foulest
tongue in British Columbia. Always, at the end of these commination
services, Tom would say to Dennis, the man, "I an't a-speakin' to you,
old socks, so keep yer hair on."
That the cow-puncher (who, in his day, must have carried a "gun") did
keep on his hair became a topic of talk amongst the boys, confirming a
conviction that Dennis had been aptly named. Certainly he lacked
backbone and jawbone. Moreover, change of skies brought to him no
change of luck. Within a fortnight he was badly hurt, and obliged to
remain in bed for nearly a week.
"I got mixed up with a log," he explained to Mamie. "It bruk loose,
an' I didn't quite get outer the way. See?"
"Me, too," whispered Mamie. "Same trouble here--'zactly."
Twice while he lay upon his back she brought to the bunk-house a
chocolate layer cake and some broth. Upon the occasion of her third
visit she came empty-handed, with her too pale eyes full of tears, and
her heart full of indignation.
"I ain't got nothing," she muttered. "Tom says it's his grub."
"That's all right," replied Dennis, noting that she walked stiffly.
"But, look ye here; he ain't been wallopin' ye, has he?"
"Yes, he has. When he was through I tole him I'd sooner have his blows
than his kisses any day."
"I hadn't oughter hev come here," said Dennis.
"Never saw the sun shine till you did," murmured Mamie.
At this he tried to take her hand, but she evaded his grasp. Then,
with an extraordinary dignity, looking deep into the man's eyes, she
said slowly: "I tole you that because it's God's truth, and sorter
justifies your comin'; but I aim ter be an honest woman, and you must
help me to remain so."
With that she flitted away.
Next day Dennis went back to work. And what work, for a man never at
best strong, and now enfeebled by severe pain and illness! Some
magnificent timber had been found a couple of miles inland, situated
not too far from the Coho. The experts had already felled, stripped,
and sawed into logs the huge trees. To Dennis and others remained the
arduous labour of guiding, with the help of windlasses, these immense
logs to the river, whence they would descend in due time to the inlet,
there to be joined together into vast rafts, later on again to be
towed to their destination. Of all labour, this steering of logs
through dense forest to their appointed waterway is the hardest and
roughest. Dennis, of course, wore thick gloves, but in spite of these
his hands were mutilated horribly, because he lacked the experience to
handle the logs with discretion. Even the best men are badly knocked
about at this particular job, and the duffers are very likely to be
killed outright.
At the end of ten lamentable days Dennis came to the conclusion that
Tom Barker wanted to kill him by the Chinese torture of Ling, or death
by a thousand cuts. More than one of the boys said: "Why don't you get
what dough is comin' to ye and skip?" Dennis shook his head. Not being
able to explain to himself why he stayed, he held his tongue, and thus
gained a reputation for grit which lightened other burdens. Jim
Doolan, the big Irishman, was of opinion that Dennis Brown was little
better than a denied baby with a soft spot in his head, but he
admitted that the cow-puncher was "white," and obviously bent upon
self-destruction. By this time the camp knew that the boss was taking
an unholy interest in Dennis, although he continued to treat him with
derisive civility. The rage he couldn't suppress was vented upon the
dog. And Dennis never saw the poor beast kicked or beaten without
reflecting: "He does that to Mamie when nobody ain't lookin'." In his
feeble fashion he tried to interfere. Dollars to Tom Barker were
dearer than cardinal virtues, and he had never been known to refuse an
opportunity to make a bit on any deal. Dennis offered to buy the dog.
"What's he worth?" said Tom, thrusting out his jaw.
"I'll give five for him."
"Five? For a dog that I've learned to love? Not much!"
"Ten?"
"Nope!"
"Fifteen?"
Tom laughed.
"You ain't got money enough to buy him," he said. "I'm going to have
more fun than a barrel o' monkeys out o' this yere dog, and don't you
forget it!"
After this Dennis, the Sunday-school teacher, the man whose golden
slippers were awaiting him in the sweet by-and-by, began to lie awake
at night and wrestle with the problem: "Is a man ever justified in
breaking the sixth commandment?" The camp held that Tom bore a charmed
life. Men had tried to kill him more than once, and had perished
ingloriously in the attempt. His coolness and courage were
indisputable. There are moments in a lumberman's business when nothing
will save an almost impossible situation but the instant exercise of
the most daring and devil-may-care pluck, determination, and skill.
Tom was never found wanting at such moments. To see him "ride a log"
was a sight to inspire admiration and respect in a Texas broncho-
buster. To kill such a superb animal might well rack a simple and
guileless cowboy whose name was--Dennis.
It is relevant to mention that Dennis, the dog, licked the hand that
beat him, fawned upon the foot that kicked him, and rendered unto his
lord and master implicit and invariable obedience. The Siwash, his
former owner, had trained him to retrieve, and of this Tom took
shameless advantage. He would throw his hat or a glove or a stick into
the middle of a rapid, and the gallant Dennis would dash into the
swirling waters, regardless of colliding logs, fanged rocks, or spiky
stumps. One day the dog got caught. Tom, with an oath, leapt on to the
nearest log, from that to another and another till he reached the poor
beast, whom he released with incredible skill and audacity, returning
as he had come, followed by the dog. The boys yelled their
appreciation of this astounding feat. Jimmy Doolan asked--
"What in thunder made ye do that, Tom?"
Tom scowled.
"I dunno," he answered. "Dennis Brown knows that I think the world of
that cur."
Within a fortnight, by an admittedly amazing coincidence, Dennis, the
man, was caught in a precisely similar fashion. As a "river-driver"
Dennis was beginning to "catch on." But he had not yet learned what he
could or could not do. River-drivers wear immense boots, heavily
spiked. Dennis upon this occasion had been sent with a crew to what is
technically called "sweep the river" after a regular drive. Such logs
as have wandered ashore, or been hung up in back eddies, are collected
and sent on to join the others. This is hard work, but exciting, and
not without its humours. Certain obstinate logs have to be coaxed down
the river. It would almost seem as if they knew the fate that awaited
them in the saw-pits, and in every fibre of their being exercised an
instinct for self-preservation. For instance, a log may refuse to pass
a certain rock in the river which has offered no obstruction whatever
to other logs. Then the lumberman, armed with his long pole, with its
spike to push and its sharp hook to pull, must reach that rock and
pull and prod the recalcitrant traveller on his appointed way.
Dennis, in attempting this, had slipped upon the rock, and his heavy
boot had been caught and held between the log and the rock. Below was
a boiling rapid; above the river swirled in a heavy, oily mass.
Dennis, to save his life, held tight on to the rock. He was in the
position of the drunken Scot who dared not abandon his grip of the
rail of the refreshment bar, because if he let go he would fall down,
and if he did not let go he must miss his train. Dennis held on with
both hands. If he endeavoured to unfasten his boot, he would be swept
into the rapid; if he did not let go, and none came to his rescue, the
log would grind his leg to powder.
Tom happened to see him and plunged into the river. Dennis had crawled
on to the rock from the other side, a feat easily achievable. Tom
might have gone round; any other man in the camp would have done so.
The odds were slightly against his reaching the rock, for the river
was running like a mill-race.
Five minutes later both men, dripping wet, were safely ashore, and the
log was careering down stream!
"Ye've saved my life," gasped Dennis.
"Never seen such a blamed fool as you in all my days," replied Tom, as
he stared savagely into Dennis's mild blue eyes. "You'd hurt yerself
rockin' a baby's cradle, you would. 'Bout time you quit men's work,
ain't it?"
"Not yet," said Dennis.
During these weeks upon the river Dennis had not seen anything of
Mamie. Tom Barker, as supreme boss, visited all crews, and then
returned to his wife, with either a leer or a frown upon his face. She
had come to loathe the leer more than the frown. In the different
camps the boys told the same story--
"He knocks the stuffin' out of her!"
The stay-at-home Briton, warm with roast beef and indigestion, will
wonder that one man amongst a hundred should be suffered to ill-treat
a thin, dough-faced little woman. Why did they not arise and slaughter
him? Had Tom stolen a colt in the cattle-country he would have been
lynched. Let publicists resolve the problem!
Finally, one Sunday morning, Dennis and Mamie met again.
"Holy Mackinaw!" exclaimed Dennis.
"Anything wrong?"
"Everything."
"I don't understand." But, of course, she did.
"It's God's truth, then, what the boys say?"
She hung her head.
"I thought he'd quit when I went up the river," said Dennis. "Say,
let's you an' me skin out o' this. I'll get my dough to-night."
"Oh, Dennis!" she murmured, in piteous protestation, "we'd burn in
eternal torment."
"We'd burn together," said Dennis. "Anyways, if this ain't torment,
and if Barker ain't Beelzebub himself, I'm a liar."
She shook her head, with the tears streaming down her thin, white
cheeks.
"Gee!" said Dennis, reduced to silence.
"I tuk him for better and worse," sobbed Mamie.
"You might ha' guessed that it would be worse," growled Dennis. Then,
desperately, he blurted out, "Because you're dead-set on keepin' the
seventh commandment, you're jest naterally drivin' me to break the
sixth."
"What?"
"I've said it. And he saved my life, too. But when I look at yer, I
get to thinking." His voice sank to a hoarse whisper. "I think lots,
nights. He comes back to ye alone, through them trees, and there's one
place where the pine needles is thick as moss. And I mind me what a
Dago told me onst. He'd killed his man, he had, stabbed him from
behind with a knife he showed me: jest an ordinary knife, only sharp.
An' he told me how he done it, whar to strike--savvy? It goes in
slick!"
He stopped, seeing that Mamie was regarding him with wide-eyed horror
and consternation.
"Dennis!"
"Yes, my name's Dennis, right enough. That's the trouble. I hav'n't
the nerve to kill Barker, and you hav'n't the nerve to skip off with
me. Were two of a kind, Mamie, scairt to death of what comes after
death. And you know it. So long!"
She caught at his arm.
"You ain't a-goin' to leave the inlet?"
"It's a mighty big country, this," Dennis replied austerely; "but I've
a notion it ain't quite big enough for Barker an' me. So long!"
"I'm comin' up to-morrer, Dennis, to see 'em run the last rapid. Mebbe
you was fullish to leave the range?"
He marked the interrogation in her tone, and answered, for him, almost
roughly--
"Mebbe I was, but not so fullish as you by a long sight!"
With that he returned to the bunk-house.
* * * * *
Not half a mile from the inlet the Coho gathers itself together for
its last wild rush to salt water. And here there is a huge pool where
logs lie peacefully as alligators in the sun. At the end of the pool
the river flows gently in a channel free from rocks and snags. Then
the channel narrows, and a little farther on you behold the head of
the rapid, and half-way down the Coho Falls thunder everlastingly.
When the logs reach the falls they are meat for the mills. Nothing can
stop them then. One after another they rise on end to take the final
plunge. Some twist and writhe as if in agony, as if conscious that the
river and forest shall know them no more. Thousands have travelled the
self-same way; not one has ever returned. The lower rapid of the Coho
hardly deserves its name. Half a mile farther on it is an estuary
across which stretches the boom.
The crews assembled on each side of the pool. The logs were pricked
into slow movement. This being duffers' work was assigned to the less
experienced. The picked river-drivers stood upon the rocks of the
upper rapid, pole in hand. And here, watching them with a lack-lustre
eye, stood Mamie in the shade of a dogwood tree in full blossom. Now
and again a soft white petal would fall upon the water and be swept
away. Above the hemlocks soughed softly. At her feet the giant
maidenhair raised its delicate fronds till they touched her cheek.
She watched the logs go by in a never-ending procession. The scene
fascinated her, although, in a sense, she was singularly devoid of
either imagination or perception. Movement beguiled a woman whose own
life had been stagnant for five-and-twenty years. Deep down in her
heart was the unformulated but inevitable conviction that the logs
were moving and that she was standing still. Tom loomed large in the
immediate foreground. He, too, moved so swiftly that his huge form
lacked definition. She saw him snatch a pole from one of the men and
stab viciously at a log which refused to budge; and every time that
his arm rose and fell a little shudder trickled down her spinal
column. The log seemed to receive the blows apathetically. A bad jam
was imminent. She could hear Tom swearing, and the other logs floating
on and on seemed to hear him also, and tremble. His bull's voice rose
loud above the roar of the falls. Mamie looked down. At her feet
crouched Dennis, the dog, and he also was trembling at those raucous
sounds, and Mamie could feel his thin ribs pressing against her own
thin legs.
At that moment light came to her obscure mind. She was like the log.
She refused to budge, funked the plunge, submitting to unending blows,
and words which were almost worse than blows. And by her obstinacy and
apathy she was driving the best man on God's earth to premeditated
murder.
That morning, let us remember, Tom had beaten the dog, and because she
had interfered with a pitiful protest her husband had struck her close
to the temple. Ever since this blow she had heard the roar of the
falls with increasing intensity.
"Why don't it move?" she asked herself.
As she put the question the log did move, borne away by the full
current. Mamie, followed by the dog, ran after it, with her eyes
aflame with excitement. Dennis barked, divining something uncanny,
eager to distract the mind of his mistress from what seemed to be
engrossing it. Still she ran on, with her eyes upon the log. The dog
knew that she must stop in a moment, that no one could pass the falls
unless they went over them. Did he divine also that she meant to go
over them--that at last, with her poor, imperfect vision, she had seen
that way out of captivity?
She reached the point where farther advance was impossible. To her
right rose a solid wall of stone; opposite rose its twin; between the
two the river rushed tumultuously, tossing the great logs hither and
thither as if they were spilikins.
Mamie watched her own log. After its goadings it kept a truer course
than most of its fellows. But she had outstripped it. Standing upon
the edge of the precipice, feeling the cold spray upon her face,
hearing the maddening roar of the monster below, less to be feared
than that other monster from whom she realised that she had escaped,
she waited for the final plunge....
What was passing in her mind at this supreme moment? We may well
believe that she saw clearly the past through the mists which obscured
the future. Always she had been a log at the mercy of a drunken
father. Her mother had died in giving birth to her, but she knew
vaguely that this mother was a Church member. She did not know--and,
knowing, could never have understood--that from her she had inherited
a conscience--or shall we call it an ineradicable instinct?--which
constrained her to turn aside, shuddering, from certain temptations,
to obey, without reasoning, certain ethical laws, solemnly expounded
to her by a Calvinistic grandmother. But Nature had been too much for
her. Even as she had turned instinctively and with horror from the
breaking of a commandment, so also she had selected the mate who
possessed in excess the physical qualities so conspicuously lacking in
her. She had fallen a victim, and a reluctant victim, to the law of
compensation. When Tom Barker held up his finger and whistled, she
crawled to him.
The log, slightly rolling, as if intoxicated, neared the brink of the
falls. And then it stopped again, where the river was narrowest and
the current strongest. No log had stopped in this place before; Mamie
saw that it was caught by a small rock, and held fast by the other
logs behind it.
"It won't go over," she murmured.
Within a minute a terrific jam impended. Across the river Tom was
swearing horribly; and between husband and wife rose a filmy cloud of
spray upon which were imprinted the mysterious colours of the rainbow,
which, long ago, Mamie had been taught to regard as the most wonderful
symbol in the world--God's promise that in the end good should triumph
over evil.
Afraid to move, fascinated, she stood still, staring at the rainbow.
Presently Tom disappeared. When he returned Mamie could see him very
plainly. He had a stick of dynamite and a fuse. Mamie saw him glance
at his watch and measure the fuse. Then, leaping from log to log, he
approached the one in midstream which lay passive, blocking the
advance of all the others. With splendid skill and daring he adjusted
the dynamite upon the small rock which held the log, and lit the fuse.
He returned as he had come, and Mamie could hear the cheers of the men
upon the opposite bank.
"It'll hev to go now," she reflected.
At this moment Dennis, the dog, must have realised that his master had
left something behind on the rock. Mamie saw him spring from log to
log, and then, holding the dynamite between his teeth, with the
spluttering fuse still attached, follow his master.
"Tom!" she screamed. "Look out!"
Tom turned and saw! And the others--Dennis Brown, Mamie, the river-
drivers--saw also and trembled. Tom began to curse the dog, adjuring
him to go back, to drop it, _drop IT_, DROP IT!
But the faithful creature, who had risked life to retrieve sticks
thrown into fierce rapids, ran steadily on. Mamie saw the face of her
husband crumble into an expression of hideous terror and palsy. His
lips mouthed inarticulately, with his huge hands he tried to push back
the monstrous fate that was overtaking him.
The dog laid the dynamite at his master's feet at the moment when it
exploded.
* * * * *
And the man whose name was Dennis knew that his turn had come at last.