Difficult to think of anything at the Landing, Sir, but what was
going on! Give you my word it was hurry; it hummed, and hissed and
sizzled and boomed. The forest fell down before the axe and saw:
felling axe and cross cut; and shacks arose, shacks and shanties and
shebangs, drinking shanties, gambling shanties, stores which sold
everything from almonds to axes, and all that comes after A right
down to Z.
The Landing's in the Wet Belt. It rains there, it pours there, the
sky falls down. Sometimes the Lake (it's on the Shushwap, you know,
close to the head of it) rises up in dancing water-spouts. It was
once a home and haunt of bears (and is again by now likely), but when
Pete stepped ashore from the hay-laden lake wagon called the s.s.
_Kamloops_, it wouldn't have been easy to find a bear or a caribou
within earshot. The Street, the one Street, was full of men. There
were English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, Russians,
Finns and Letts, mixed with autochthonous Americans with long greasy
hair (Siwashes who lived on salmon) and other Americans of all sorts.
It was a sink, a pool, a whirlpool, it sucked men up from down
country: it drew them from the mountains. To go East you had to pass
it: going West you couldn't avoid it.
Men worked there and drank there and gambled there. There were
Chinamen about who played the universal Fan-tan. There were Faro
tables: Keno went there: stud-horse poker had its haunts and
votaries. The street was a mud channel: men drank and lay in it. By
the Lake they lay in piles, and more especially the Swedes did. They
are rousing drinkers "and no fatal error."
There was night there, of course, for the sun couldn't and wouldn't
stay to save them oil, but as to peace or quietness, the peaceful
quiet of a human night, there was no such thing. Sunday was rowdier
than other days, if any day could be rowdier. If a man wanted work
he could get it. Devil doubt it, work was to be had at fine prices.
Bosses employed men to come and pretend even for two and a half a
day. They dragged men in and said, "Take my dollars, sonny, and move
some of this stuff." Men worked and took the dollars and gave them
to the stores and gamblers. It seemed impossible that there could
ever be a lack of work. You could get work on the grade, tilikum;
you could have a little contract for yourself, my son. You could
drive a team if you could handle horses and mules over a toat road
that would make an ordinary driver weep: why, there were all kinds of
work, with axe and saw and pick and shovel, and bar and drill and
wedge and hammer, and maul and all sorts of other tools. It was a
concert truly, a devil's dance of work, and of hurry and scurry and
worry.
Why, tilikum?
Because the railroad was being put through and coming to an End, to
two ends, to two Ends of Track, now closing up rapidly. Once the
work had been spread over four thousand miles, away by Montreal and
Quebec and the Lake of the Woods and the Great Lake Side, and away to
Winnipeg and Medicine Hat and Calgary and the Rockies. Now the work
narrowed to a few hundred miles, to a hundred; to-morrow, perhaps to
fifty. All the world of the road was rammed and jammed and crammed
into a little space, as if it were but the Gulf of Athlone. Men
thrust each other aside, it was elbow work, jostling, it was a high
old crowd. Betcher life, tilikum, it was a daisy of a time and place
that dark-eyed Pete stepped into out of that old scow of a
stern-wheeler.
The Town scooted: she hummed: she sizzled. What ho, and let her rip!
That was the word. The soberest men grew drunken on mere prospects:
there was money in everything: no one could miss it: dollars grew on
trees: they lined the roads: they could be caught swimming in the
Lake. Men lived fatly: hash was good and none too dear, after all.
"For hayf a dollar" one could get piled up, get stodged, pawled.
"Oh, come in and Eat," said one house.
"We give the best Pie," said another. Pie fetched the men every
time. Your worker loves his pie: there's a fine lumberers' song
about Pie which is as popular with the men of the Woods as "Joint
Ahead and Centre Back" is with Railroaders. They all gave good pie
at the Landing. You bet, tilikum.
Pete, in all his born days, had never seen or heard or dreamt of such
an astonishing hubbub, such go, such never-let-up, as he saw at the
busy Landing. He was a stunned, astonished Siwash for a while and
wandered around with his eyes out of his head, feeling lonely,
stranded, desolate. And then he found that he knew men here and
there and everywhere. Some of them slapped him on the back: some
said "Howdy": some said "Hev a drink, sonny!" Men were generous:
they felt they were millionaires or on the way to be: it was a fine
old world. Pete smiled and smoked and drank in this house and that
and forgot for awhile all about Mason, who was supposed to be running
a little saw-mill in the woods, that Missouri Simpson had told him
of. Pete put his woes into the background; he couldn't hear or see
them at the Landing for quite a while. There was truly a weakness of
revenge in him. If either or both of the Quins had followed him up
and said:
"Look hyar, Pete, come and hev a drink and let's talk about these
klootchmen----"
Why, it is at least possible that Pete would have drunk till he wept
and have taken dollars to forgive them about Jenny and Mary. He had
a weakness in him, poor devil, as so many have.
But when finally he did get work in a big stable helping the head
stableman who looked after some of the C.P. Syndicate's horses, he
found many who remembered or had heard, or had just learned all about
Jenny and Mary. That's the best or the worst of B.C., as I said some
time ago, everyone knew everyone and all about them. They talked
scandal like a lot of old or young women: told you about this man's
wife or that: they raked up the horrid true story of Ned Quin's
killing one poor klootchman by kicking her. They asked Pete for
information about Mary. When some were drunk they mentioned Jenny.
They never gave poor Pete a chance to forget, and over and above the
mere mischief of drunken scandalous chatter, there were one or two
who hated the Quins. Neither of them hesitated about downing a man
by way of business, though of late years Ned had been no more than a
shooling no-good-sort of man all round. So one or two said:
"Say, Pete, you ain't let up on them Quins, hev you? Them Quins are
two damn smart-alecks, that's what they are! I say they're mean, oh,
mean ain't the word. I hear Ned Quin cut your sister to slivers with
an axe. Is it true?"
They got him crying about Mary and Jenny, and presently it was
understood that Pete had forgotten nothing. All he was after was a
few dollars. Why? "Well, to tell the trewth, tilikums, I believe,
straight, that the boy's idea is to kill one or both o' them Quins
and then skip across the forty-ninth Par'lel and away."
They put that into Pete's head: told him it was easy to skip out.
They knew better. But one man, named Cumberland, who had been done
in a deal by George and done pretty badly, cheated, in fact, and
outfaced, egged the boy on daily. Cumberland had all the desire to
be "a bad man" without the pluck, or grit, or sand to be an imitation
of one. But he never forgot.
In all the fume and roar of this short-lived Town it was easier to
get money than to save it. Everything cost money, cost dollars; "two
bits" was the least coin that went, and that's a quarter of a dollar.
Pete had an Indian's thirst, and drank more than was good for him.
If it hadn't been that the rush of work handling hay-bales, sacks of
oats, maize, flour, mats of sugar, cases of dynamite, and tools and
all the rest, sweated the alcohol out of him he would have got the
sack promptly, the Grand Bounce. As it was he stayed, being really a
worker, and as nice a boy to work alongside as one could wish.
"Pete's a clever boy for a Sitcum Siwash," said the Boss. For clever
in the vernacular of the West means nice. They quite liked him, even
though the real white men looked down on him, of course, as real
Whites will on everyone who isn't White. But he had his tilikums
even there, an Irish Mike who hadn't learned to look down on anyone
and would have actually consorted with a nigger, and another
half-breed, originally from Washington Territory and by his mother a
D'wamish, or Tulalip, of the Salishan, but educated, so to speak.
They both looked down on the Indians of the Lakes, who caught salmon
and smelt wild and fishy, like a bear in the salmon-spawning season.
Oh, yes, Pete had his friends. But no friend that was any good. For
D'wamish Jack was a thick-headed fellow and the Micky always
red-headed for revenge on everyone.
"I'll stick 'um," he used to say. He was going to stick everyone who
disagreed with him. He had an upper lip almost as long as an
American-Irish caricature. When he was drunk he moaned about Ireland
and Pete's woes and his own.
With such partners in the hum of the Town it wasn't a wonder that
Pete didn't accumulate the shekels, or pile in the dibs or the
dollars, or the t'kope chikamin. He had as many cents to his name by
the time it was high summer as when he came to the Landing. And then
he struck a streak of luck, as he said, and as D'wamish Jack said and
as the Mike said. He went one Sunday into a Faro lay-out, run by an
exceedingly pleasant scoundrel from Arizona, who was known as Tucson
Thompson. You will kindly pronounce Tucson as Tewson, and oblige.
There wasn't another such a man as Tucson in the Town, or the Wet
Belt, or the Dry Belt, or all B.C. He was born to be a gambler and
was really polite, so polite that it was impossible to believe he had
ever killed anyone when you were with him and quite as impossible to
doubt it when you went away and thought of him. He was nearly fifty,
but as thin as a lath, he could talk like a phonograph, tell stories
like an entertainer, and the few women in the town held the belief
that he was exceedingly handsome. He wasn't, but he had a very
handsome tongue. When he lost, if he did lose, he didn't seem to
mind. When he won, he appeared to take the money with some regret.
At the worst he did it as a pure matter of business: he gave you so
many cards, and you gave him so many dollars. He said he ran a
straight game. There wasn't a man in the Town equal to saying he
didn't, and when one understands that no one is allowed to kill
anyone else in British Columbia for saying he is a liar, it will be
understood that there was more to Tucson Thompson that lay on the
surface. He inspired respect, and required it with a politeness
which was never urgent but never unsuccessful.
He had his lay-out in the back-room of the Shushwap House, where they
sold "Good Pie," and said so outside in big letters.
It was there that Pete acquired what he looked on as a competency.
It was two hundred and fifty dollars, a very magnificent sum.
Whether Tucson really ran a straight game, or thought it was about
time to give himself a great advertisement, cannot be said, but this
time Tucson or the straight cards let Pete in for a mighty good
thing, which turned out a bad thing, of course. The only point about
it was that Tucson didn't get the cash back again, as he might very
reasonably have expected, seeing that gamblers are gamblers, and that
a Sitcum Siwash doesn't usually hang on to dollars till the eagles on
them squeal in anguish.
And the reason of this was that someone from Kamloops, a storekeeper
on the look out for business at the Landing, was in the gambling
shanty when Pete raked in his pile. He slapped Pete on the back
first of anyone and took him on one side.
"Say, Pete, old son, hev you heard about your sister?" he asked.
"Heard what?" asked Pete.
"She's outer the hawspital."
"Have you seen her?"
The storekeeper nodded.
"She's dreadful hurt, Pete," he said with horrid unction. "I saw her
the day she kem out. She's wropped up all one side of her face, like
a corp, all in white. They say Ned Quin cut half her face off."
Pete's face was as dreadful as his sister's.
"Where is she?"
"She's gone back to Ned," replied the storekeeper. "She would go
back: it warn't no good arguin' with her. Mrs. Alexander offered her
a job in her kitchen, bein' a good old soul, but Mary would go back
to him, she would."
Pete stood him a drink and then took one himself and then another.
He flatly refused to play any more. But he spent ten dollars on the
crowd. The more he drank the soberer he seemed to grow. The liquor
hid the tension in him, and the excitement of the game. Mary was cut
to bits and was back with Ned! He chewed on that as he drank. The
storekeeper got hold of him again.
"Some enemy o' Ned's got home on him, Pete, and no fatal error," said
he, with his eyes fixed on the young fellow; "some enemy got home on
him and no fatal error."
"What?" said Pete.
"They ran his cattle, some fine fat steers and a few good cows, into
the cañon back of his place, and killed most of them."
Pete grunted and looked on the floor.
"He allows you done it, Pete. But there ain't no evidence you done
it, boy. The men araound Kamloops allows it sarves him right, Pete.
Ned Quin ain't a single friend araound Kamloops. The poor girl! She
used to be so pretty. I reklec' her as a little girl: there warn't a
tenas klootchman araound ez' could hold a candle to Mary, bar your
wife Jenny. I heerd George Quin hez give her dresses and rides her
araound in a carriage, Pete."
There were many times when the Kamloops steamer left the Landing at
night. She couldn't keep to times: she came and went when she was
full or empty. The owners of the cranky old scow, turned into a
sternwheeler, coined money out of her, though her steam-chest leaked
and she shook as she went. Now she tooted her horn, blew her
whistle. It was nigh on to midnight, but there was a high white moon
above the hills, and on the quiet lake a moon's wake shone. Pete
thrust the storekeeper aside and went to the door.
"Hullo, Pete, old chap, where you goin'? Halo klatawa, you son of a
gun!" said many. But Pete paid no attention. His wife was riding
around in carriages with George Quin, and Mary had gone back to Ned.
He ran down to the wharf where the steamer lay and jumped on board as
she backed off the shingle.
He saw the fairy lights of the Landing die down, and then the steamer
rounded a point and the Landing saw him no more.
"I'll kill em' both," said Pete. He could not see the quiet wonder
of the night and the glory of the moon above the peaceful pine-clad
hills. He saw poor Mary in a shroud, and Jenny laughing at him from
the side of George Quin, who also smiled in triumph.