GEOFFREY'S FIRST CONTRACT
It was springtime among the mountains which, glistening coldly white
with mantles of eternal snow, towered above the deep-sunk valley, when,
one morning, Geoffrey Thurston limped painfully out of a redwood forest
of British Columbia. The boom of a hidden river set the pine sprays
quivering. A blue grouse was drumming deliriously on the top of a
stately fir, and the morning sun drew clean, healing odors from balsam
and cedar.
The scene was characteristic of what is now the grandest and wildest,
as it will some day be the richest, province of the Canadian Dominion.
The serene majesty of snow-clad heights and the grandeur of vast
shadowy aisles, with groined roofs of red branches and mighty
colonnades of living trunks, were partly lost upon the traveler who,
most of the preceding night, had trudged wearily over rough railroad
ballast. He had acquired Colonial experience of the hardest kind by
working through the winter in an Ontario logging camp, which is a rough
school.
An hour earlier the man, to visit whom Thurston had undertaken an
eight-league journey, had laughed in his face when he offered to drain
a lake which flooded his ranch. Saying nothing, but looking grimmer
than ever, Geoffrey had continued his weary journey in search of
sustenance. He frowned as he flung himself down beneath a fir, for,
shimmering like polished steel between the giant trees, the glint of
water caught his eye, and the blue wood smoke curling over the house on
a distant slope suggested the usual plentiful Colonial breakfast.
Although Geoffrey's male forbears had been reckless men, his mother had
transmitted him a strain of north-country canniness. The remnant of
his poor possessions, converted into currency, lay in a Canadian bank
to provide working capital and, finding no scope for his mental
abilities, he had wandered here and there endeavoring to sell the
strength of his body for daily bread. Sometimes he had been
successful, more often he had failed, but always, when he would accept
it, the kindly bush settlers gave him freely of their best. As he
basked in the warmth and brightness, he took from his pocket a few
cents' worth of crackers. When he had eaten, his face relaxed, for the
love of wild nature was born in him, and the glorious freshness of the
spring was free to the poorest as well as to the richest. He stooped
to drink at a glacier-fed rill, and then producing a corn-cob pipe,
sighed on finding that only the tin label remained of his cake of
tobacco.
Through the shadow of the firs two young women watched him with
curiosity. The man looked worn and weary, his jean jacket was old and
torn, and an essential portion of one boot was missing. The stranger's
face had been almost blackened by the snow-reflected glare of the clear
winter sun, and yet both girls decided that he was hardly a
representative specimen of the wandering fraternity of tramps.
Helen Savine was slender, tall, and dark. Though arrayed in a plain
dress of light fabric, she carried herself with a dignity befitting the
daughter of the famous engineering contractor, Julius Savine, and a
descendant, through her mother, from Seigneurs of ancient French
descent who had ruled in patriarchal fashion in old-world Quebec. Jean
Graham, whose father owned the ranch on the slope behind them, was
ruddy in face, with a solidity of frame that betokened Caledonian
extraction, and true trans-Atlantic directness of speech.
"He must be hungry," whispered Jean. "Quite good-looking, too, and
it's queer he sits there munching those crackers, instead of walking
straight up and striking us for a meal. I don't like to see a
good-looking man hungry," she added, reflectively.
"We will go down and speak to him," said Helen, and the suggestion that
she should interview a wandering vagrant did not seem out of place in
that country where men from many different walks of life turned their
often ill-fitted hands to the rudest labor that promised them a
livelihood. In any case, Helen possessed a somewhat imperious will,
which was supplemented by a grace of manner which made whatever she did
appear right.
Geoffrey, looking round at the sound of approaching steps, stood
suddenly upright, thrusting the more dilapidated boot behind the other,
and wondering with what purpose the two girls had sought him. One he
recognized as a type common enough throughout the Dominion--kindly,
shrewd, somewhat hard-featured and caustic in speech; but the other,
who looked down on him with thinly-veiled pity, more resembled the
women of birth and education whom he had seen in England.
"You are a stranger to this district. Looking for work, perhaps?" said
Helen Savine. Geoffrey lifted his wide and battered felt hat as he
answered, "I am."
"There is work here," announced Helen. "I can offer you a dollar
now--if you would care to earn it. Yonder rock, which I believe is a
loose boulder, obstructs our wagon trail. If you are willing to remove
it and will follow us to the ranch, you will find suitable tools."
Geoffrey flushed a little under his tan. When seeking work he had
grown used to being sworn at by foremen with Protectionist tendencies,
but it galled him to be offered a woman's charity, and the words "If
you would care to earn it," left a sting. Nevertheless, he reflected
that any superfluous sensitiveness would be distinctly out of place in
one of his position, and, considering the wages paid in that country,
the man who rolled the boulder clear would well earn his dollar.
Accordingly he answered: "I should be glad to remove the rock, if I
can."
The two young women turned back towards the ranch, and Thurston
followed respectfully, as far as possible in the rear, that they might
not observe the condition of his attire. This was an entirely
superfluous precaution, for Helen's keen eyes had noticed.
Reaching the ranch, Geoffrey possessed himself of a grub-hoe, which is
a pick with an adz-shaped blade with an ax and shovel; also he returned
with the girls to the boulder. For an hour or two he toiled hard,
grubbing out hundredweights of soil and gravel from round about the
rock. Then cutting a young fir he inserted the butt of it as a lever,
and spent another thirty minutes focusing his full strength on the
opposite end. The rock, however, refused to move an inch, and, because
a few crackers are not much for a hungry man to work on after an
all-night march, Thurston became conscious that he had a headache and a
distressful stitch in his side. Still, being obstinate and filled with
an unreasoning desire to prove his trustworthiness to his fair
employer, he continued doggedly, and after another hour's digging found
the stone still immovable. Then it happened that while, with the
perspiration dripping from him, he tugged at the lever, the rancher who
had rebuffed him that morning, drew rein close beside.
"Hello! What are you after now? You're messing all this trail up if
you're doing nothing else," he declared in a tone of challenge.
"If you have come here to amuse yourself at my expense, take care. I'm
not in the mood for baiting," answered Thurston, who still smarted
under the recollection of the summary manner in which the speaker had
rejected his proffered services. "There are, however, folks in this
country more willing to give a stranger a chance than you, and I've
taken a contract to remove that rock for a dollar. Now, if you are
satisfied, ride on your way."
"Then you've made a blame bad bargain," commented the rancher, with
unruffled good humor. "I was figuring that I might help you. I
thought you were a hobo after my chickens, or trying to bluff me into a
free meal this morning. If you'd asked straight for it, I'd have given
it you."
Geoffrey hesitated, divided between an inclination to laugh or to
assault the rancher, who perhaps guessed his thoughts, for,
dismounting, he said:
"If you're so mighty thin-skinned what are you doing here? Why don't
you British dukes stop right back in your own country where folks touch
their hats to you? Let me on to that lever."
For at least twenty minutes, the two men tugged and panted. Then
Bransome, the rancher, said:
"The blame thing's either part of the out-crop or wedged fast there
forever, and I've no more time to spare. Say, Graham's a hard man, and
has been playing it low on you. What's the matter with turning his
contract up and going over to fill oat bags for me?"
"Thank, but having given my word to move that rock, I'm going to stay
here until I do it," answered Geoffrey; and Bransome, nodding to him,
rode on towards the ranch.
When he reached it Bransome said to Jean Graham in the hearing of Miss
Savine:
"The old man has taken in yonder guileless stranger who has put two
good dollars' worth of work into that job already, and the rock's
rather faster than it was before."
"Did he say Mr. Graham hired him?" asked Helen, and she drew her own
inference when Bransome answered:
"Why, no! I put it that way, and he didn't contradict me."
It was afternoon when Thurston realized at last that even considerable
faith in one's self is not sufficient, unaided, to move huge boulders.
He felt faint and hungry, but the pride of the Insular Briton
restrained him from begging for a meal. His own dislike to acknowledge
defeat also prompted him to decide that where weary muscles failed,
mechanical power might succeed, and he determined to tramp back a
league to the settlement in the hope of perhaps obtaining a drill and
some giant powder on credit. He had not studied mining theoretically
as well as in a costly practical school for nothing.
It was a rough trail to the settlement. The red dust lay thick upon it
and the afternoon sun was hot. When at last, powdered all over with
dust and very weary, Thurston came in sight of the little wooden store,
he noticed Bransome's horse fastened outside it. He did not see the
rancher, who sat on an empty box behind a sugar hogshead inside the
counter.
"I want two sticks of giant powder, a fathom or two of fuse, and
several detonators," said Geoffrey as indifferently as he could. "I
have only two bits at present to pay for them, but if they don't come
to more than a dollar you shall have the rest to-morrow. I also want
to borrow a drill."
The storekeeper was used to giving much longer credit than Geoffrey
wanted, but the glance he cast at the applicant was not reassuring, and
it is possible he might have refused his request, but that, unseen by
Thurston, Bransome signaled to him from behind the barrel.
"We don't trade that way with strangers generally," the storekeeper
answered. "Still, if you want them special, and will pay me what
they're worth to-morrow, I'll oblige you, and even lend you a set of
drills. But you'll come back sure, and not lose any of them drills?"
he added dubiously.
"I haven't come here to rob you. It's a business deal, and not a favor
I'm asking," asserted Geoffrey grimly, and when he withdrew the
storekeeper observed:
"Why can't you do your own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me?
That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess
I'll never see either him or them drills again."
"You will," the rancher assured him. "If that man's alive to-morrow
you'll get your money; I'll go bail for him. He's just the man you
mention, but I'm considerably less sure about the crankiness than I was
this morning. There's a quantity of fine clean sand in him."
Meanwhile, and soon after Geoffrey had set out for the store, the two
girls strolled down the trail to ascertain how he was progressing.
They looked at each other significantly when they came upon the litter
of debris and tools.
"Lit out!" announced Jean Graham. "The sight of all that work was too
much for him. He'll be lying on his back now by the river thinking
poetry. This country's just thick with reposeful Britishers nobody at
home has any use for, and their kind friends ship off onto us. In a
way I'm sorry. He lit out hungry, and he didn't look like a loafer."
"I'm afraid we were a little hard upon him," said Helen, smiling.
"Still, I am somewhat surprised he did not carry out his bargain."
"You can never trust those gilt-edge Britishers," said Jean Graham with
authority. "There was old man Peters who took one of them in, and he'd
sit in the store nights making little songs to his banjo, and talking
just wonderful. Said he was a baronet or something, if he had his
rights, and made love to Sally. Old fool Peters believed him, and lent
him three hundred dollars to start a lawsuit over his English property
with. Dessay Peters thought red-haired Sally would look well trailing
round as a countess in a gold-hemmed dress. The baronet took the
money, but wanted some more, and lit out the same night with Lou of the
Sapin Rouge saloon."
"I should hardly expect all that from our acquaintance of this morning,
but I am disappointed, though I'm sure I don't know why I should be,"
said Helen Savine.
The sunlight had faded from the valley, though the peaks still
shimmered orange and red, and the broken edge of a glacier flashed like
a great rose diamond, when the two girls sat on the veranda encircling
Graham's ranch-house. The rancher and his stalwart sons were away
rounding up his cattle, but Jean was expecting both them and her mother
and the delayed supper was ready. The evening was very still and cool.
The life-giving air was heavy with the breath of dew-touched cedars,
while the hoarse clamor of the river accentuated the hush of the
mountain solitude. Strange to say, both of the girls were thinking
about the vagrant, and Helen Savine, who considered herself a judge of
character, had been more impressed by him than she would have cared to
admit. There was no doubt, she reflected, that the man was tolerably
good-looking and had enjoyed some training, though perhaps not the
best, in England. He had also known adversity, she deduced from the
gauntness of his face and a certain grimness of expression. She had
noticed that his chin indicated a masterful expression and she was,
therefore, the more surprised that he had allowed himself to be
vanquished by the boulder.
Suddenly a heavy crash broke through the musical jangle of cow bells
that drew nearer up the valley, and a cloud of yellow smoke curling
above the dark branches spread itself across the fir tops in filmy
folds.
"I guess that's our hobo blowing the rock up!" cried Jean. "I wonder
where he stole the giant powder from. Well, daddy's found his cattle,
and the swearing will have made him hungry. I'll start Kate on to the
supper, and we'll bring the man in when he comes round for his dollar."
Presently Thurston knocked at the door, and strode in at a summons to
enter. Slightly abashed, he halted inside the threshold. Jean,
looking ruddy and winsome in light print dress, with sleeves rolled
clear of each plump fore-arm, was spreading great platefuls of hot
cakes and desiccated fruits among the more solid viands on the snowy
tablecloth. Geoffrey found it difficult to refrain from glancing
wolfishly at the good things until his eyes rested upon Miss Savine,
and then it cost him an effort to turn them away. Helen reclined on an
ox-hide lounge. An early rose rested among the glossy clusters of her
thick, dark hair. A faint tinge of crimson showed through the pale
olive in her cheek, and he caught the glimmer of pearly teeth between
the ripe red lips. In her presence he grew painfully conscious that he
was ragged, toil-stained and dusty, though he had made the best toilet
he could beside a stream.
"I have removed the rock, and have brought the tools back," he said.
"How much did the explosives cost you?" asked Helen, and Geoffrey
smiled.
"If you will excuse me, is not that beside the question? I engaged to
remove the boulder, and I have done it," he answered.
Ever since her mother's death, Helen Savine had ruled her father and
most of the men with whom she came in contact. She had come to the
ranch with Mr. Savine, who was interested in many enterprises in the
neighborhood and she was prepared to be interested in whatever
occurred. Few of her wishes ever had been thwarted, so, naturally, she
was conscious of a faint displeasure that a disheveled wanderer should
even respectfully slight her question. Placing two silver coins on the
table, the said coldly:
"Then here are your covenanted wages, and we are obliged to you."
Geoffrey handed one of the coins back with a slight inclination of his
head. "Our bargain was one dollar, madam, and I cannot take more.
Perhaps you have forgotten," he replied.
Helen was distinctly annoyed now. The color grew a little warmer in
her cheek and her eyes brighter, but she uttered only a "Thank you,"
and took up the piece of silver.
Jean Graham, prompted by the Westerner's generous hospitality, and a
feeling that she had been overlooked, spoke:
"You have earned a square meal any way, and you're going to get it,"
she declared. "Sit right down there and we'll have supper when the
boys come in."
Uneasily conscious that Helen was watching him, Thurston cast a swift
hungry glance at the food. Then, remembering his frayed and tattered
garments and the hole in his boot, he answered: "I thank you, but as I
must be well on my way to-morrow I cannot stay."
"Then you'll take these along, and eat them when it suits you," said
the girl, deftly thrusting a plateful of hot cakes upon him. Divided
between gratitude and annoyance, Geoffrey stood still, stupidly holding
out the dainties at arm's length, while flavored syrup dripped from
them. It was equally impossible to return them without flagrant
discourtesy or to retire with any dignity. Finally, he moved out
backwards still clutching the plate of cakes, and when he had
disappeared Helen laughed softly, while Jean's merriment rang out in
rippling tones.
"You saved the situation," said Helen. "It was really getting
embarrassing, and he made me ashamed. I ought to have known better
than to play that trick with the dollar, but the poor man looked as if
he needed it. He is certainly not a hobo, and I could wonder who he
is, but that it does not matter, as we shall never see him again."
Meanwhile, Geoffrey Thurston walked savagely down the trail. He felt
greatly tempted to hurl the cakes away, but, on second thoughts, ate
them instead. It was a trifling decision, but it led to important
results, as trifles often do, because, if he had not satisfied his
hunger, he would have limped back through the settlement towards the
railroad and probably never would have re-entered the valley. As it
was, when the edge of his hunger was blunted he felt drowsy, and,
curling himself up among the roots of hemlock, sank into slumber under
the open sky. Early next morning Bransome stopped him on the trail.
"I've been thinking over what you told me about making a rock cutting
to run the water clear of my meadows," said the rancher, "and if you're
still keen on business I'm open to talk to you."
"Why didn't you talk yesterday morning?" inquired Thurston, and
Bransome answered frankly: "Well, just then I had my doubts about you;
now I figure that if you say you can do a thing, you can. Come over to
the ranch, and, if we can't make a deal, I'll give you a week's work,
any way."
"Thanks!" replied Thurston. "I should be glad to, but I have some
business at the settlement first. Will you advance me a dollar, on
account of wages, so that I can discharge a debt to the storekeeper?"
"Why, yes!" agreed the rancher. "But didn't you get a dollar from
Graham yesterday? Do you want two?"
"Yes!" said Thurston. "I want two," and Bransome laughed.
"You're in a greater hurry to pay your debts than other folks from your
country I've met over here," he observed with a smile. "But come on to
the ranch and breakfast; I'll square the storekeeper for you."
Thurston accepted the chance that offered him a sustaining meal, but he
did not explain that, owing to some faint trace of superstition in his
nature, he intended to keep Helen Savine's dollar. It was the first
coin that he had earned as his own master, in the Dominion, and he felt
that the successfully-executed contract marked a turning point in his
career.