The dinner hour found Dan Failing in the public library of Gitcheapolis,
asking the girl who sat behind the desk if he might look at maps of
Oregon. He got out the whole question without coughing once, but in
spite of it she felt that he ought to be asking for California or
Arizona maps, rather than Oregon. People did not usually go to Oregon to
rid themselves of his malady. A librarian, as a rule, is a wonderfully
well-informed person; but her mental picture of Oregon was simply one
large rainstorm. She remembered that she used to believe that Oregon
people actually grew webs between their toes, and the place was thus
known as the Webfoot State. She didn't know that Oregon has almost as
many climates as the whole of nature has in stock,--snow in the east,
rain in the north, winds in the west, and sunshine in the south, with
all the grades between. There are certain sections where in midwinter
all hunters who do not particularly care to sink over their heads in
the level snow walk exclusively on snowshoes. There are others, not one
hundred miles distant, where any kind of snowstorm is as rare a
phenomenon as the seventeen-year locusts. Distances are rather vasty in
the West. For instance, the map that Dan Failing looked at did not seem
much larger than the map, say, of Maryland. Figures showed, however,
that at least two counties of Oregon were each as large as the whole
area of the former State.
He remembered that his grandfather had lived in Southern Oregon. He
looked along the bottom of his map and discovered a whole empire,
ranging from gigantic sage plains to the east to dense forests along the
Pacific Ocean. Those sage flats, by the way, contain not only sage hens
as thick as poultry in a hen-yard and jack rabbits of a particularly
long-legged and hardy breed, but also America's one species of antelope.
Had Dan known that this was true, had he only been aware that these
antelope are without exception the fastest-running creatures upon the
face of the earth, he might have been tempted to go there instead of to
the land of his fathers. But all he saw on the map was a large brown
space marked at exceedingly long intervals with the name of a fort or
town. He began to search for Linkville.
Time was when Linkville was one of the principal towns of Oregon. Dan
remembered the place because some of the time-yellowed letters his
grandfather had sent him had been mailed at a town that bore this name.
But he couldn't find Linkville on the map. Later he was to know the
reason,--that the town, halfway between the sage plains and the
mountains, had prospered and changed its name. He remembered that it was
located on one of those great fresh-water lakes of Southern Oregon; so,
giving up that search, he began to look for lakes. He found them in
plenty,--vast, unmeasured lakes that seemed to be distributed without
reason or sense over the whole southern end of the State. Near the
Klamath Lakes, seemingly the most imposing of all the fresh-water lakes
that the map revealed, he found a city named Klamath Falls. He put the
name down in his notebook.
The map showed a particularly high, far-spreading range of mountains due
west of the city. Of course they were the Cascades; the map said so very
plainly. Then Dan knew he was getting home. His grandfather had lived
and trapped and died in these same wooded hills. Finally he located and
recorded the name of the largest city on the main railroad line that was
adjacent to the Cascades.
The preparation for his departure took many days. He read many books on
flora and fauna. He bought sporting equipment. Knowing the usual ratio
between the respective pleasures of anticipation and realization, he did
not hurry himself at all. And one midnight he boarded a west-bound
train.
There were none that he cared about bidding good-by. The sudden
realization of the fact brought a moment's wonder. He had not realized
that he had led such a lonely existence. There were men who were fitted
for living in cities, but perhaps he was not one of them. He saw the
station lights grow dim as the train pulled out. Soon he could discern
just a spark, here and there, from the city's outlying homes. And not
long after this, the silence and darkness of the farm lands closed down
upon the train.
He sat for a long time in the vestibule of the sleeping car, thinking in
anticipation of this final adventure of his life. It is true that he had
not experienced many adventures. He had lived most of them in
imagination alone; or else, with tired eyes, he had read of the exploits
of other men. He was rather tremulous and exultant as he sank down into
his berth.
He saw to it that at least a measure of preparation was made for his
coming. That night a long wire went out to the Chamber of Commerce of
one of the larger Southern Oregon cities. In it, he told the date of his
arrival and asked certain directions. He wanted to know the name of some
mountain rancher where possibly he might find board and room for the
remainder of the summer and the fall. He wanted shooting, and he
particularly cared to be near a river where trout might be found. They
never came up Gitcheapolis River, or leaped for flies in the pond back
of the courthouse. The further back from the paths of men, he wrote, the
greater would be his pleasure. And he signed the wire with his full
name: Dan Failing with a Henry in the middle, and a "III" at the end.
He usually didn't sign his name in quite this manner. The people of
Gitcheapolis did not have particularly vivid memories of Dan's
grandfather. But it might be that a legend of the gray, straight
frontiersman who was his ancestor had still survived in these remote
Oregon wilds. The use of the full name would do no harm.
Instead of hurting, it was a positive inspiration. The Chamber of
Commerce of the busy little Oregon city was not usually exceptionally
interested in stray hunters that wanted a boarding place for the summer.
Its business was finding country homes for orchardists in the pleasant
river valleys. But it happened that the recipient of the wire was one of
the oldest residents, a frontiersman himself, and it was one of the
traditions of the Old West that friendships were not soon forgotten. Dan
Failing I had been a legend in the old trapping and shooting days when
this man was young. So it came about that when Dan's train stopped at
Cheyenne, he found a telegram waiting him:
"Any relation to Dan Failing of the Umpqua Divide?"
Dan had never heard of the Umpqua Divide, but he couldn't doubt but that
the sender of the wire referred to his grandfather. He wired in the
affirmative. The head of the Chamber of Commerce received the wire, read
it, thrust it into his desk, and in the face of a really important piece
of business proceeded to forget all about it. Thus it came about that,
except for one thing, Dan Failing would have probably stepped off the
train at his destination wholly unheralded and unmet. The one thing that
changed his destiny was that at a meeting of a certain widely known
fraternal order the next night, the Chamber of Commerce crossed trails
with the Frontier in the person of another old resident who had his
home in the farthest reaches of the Umpqua Divide. The latter asked the
former to come up for a few days' shooting--the deer being fatter and
more numerous than any previous season since the days of the grizzlies.
For it is true that one of the most magnificent breed of bears that ever
walked the face of the earth once left their footprints, as of
flour-sacks in the mud, from one end of the region to another.
"Too busy, I'm afraid," the Chamber of Commerce had replied. "But
Lennox--that reminds me. Do you remember old Dan Failing?"
Lennox probed back into the years for a single instant, straightened out
all the kinks of his memory in less time than the wind straightens out
the folds of a flag, and turned a most interested face. "Remember him!"
he exclaimed. "I should say I do." The middle-aged man half-closed his
piercing, gray eyes. Those piercing eyes are a characteristic peculiar
to the mountain men, and whether they come from gazing over endless
miles of winter snow, or from some quality of steel that life in the
mountains imbues, no one is quite able to determine.
"Listen, Steele," he said. "I saw Dan Failing make a bet once. I was
just a kid, but I wake up in my sleep to marvel at it. We had a full
long glimpse of a black-tail bounding up a long slope. It was just a
spike-buck, and Dan Failing said he could take the left-hand spike off
with one shot from his old Sharpe's. Three of us bet him--the whole
thing in less than two seconds. With the next shot, he'd get the deer.
He won the bet, and now if I ever forget Dan Failing, I want to die."
"You're just the man I'm looking for, then. You're not going out till
the day after to-morrow?"
"No."
"On the limited, hitting here to-morrow morning, there's a grandson of
Dan Failing. His name is Dan Failing too, and he wants to go up to your
place to hunt. Stay all summer and pay board."
Lennox's eyes said that he couldn't believe it was true. After a while
his tongue spoke, too. "Good Lord," he said. "I used to foller Dan
around--like old Shag, before he died, followed Snowbird. Of course he
can come. But he can't pay board."
It was rather characteristic of the mountain men,--that the grandson of
Dan Failing couldn't possibly pay board. But Steele knew the ways of
cities and of men, and he only smiled. "He won't come, then," he
explained. "Anyway, have that out with him at the end of his stay. He
wants fishing, and you've got that in the North fork. He wants shooting,
and if there is a place in the United States with more wild animals
around the back door than at your house, I don't know where it is.
Moreover, you're a thousand miles back--"
"Only one hundred, if you must know. But Steele--do you suppose he's the
man his grandfather was before him--that all the Failings have been
since the first days of the Oregon trail? If he is--well, my hat's off
to him before he steps off the train."
The mountaineer's bronzed face was earnest and intent in the bright
lights of the club. Steele thought he had known this breed. Now he began
to have doubts of his own knowledge. "He won't be; don't count on it,"
he said humbly. "The Failings have done much for this region, and I'm
glad enough to do a little to pay it back, but don't count much on this
Eastern boy. He's lived in cities; besides, he's a sick man. He said so
in his wire. You ought to know it before you take him in."
The bronzed face changed; possibly a shadow of disappointment came into
his eyes. "A lunger, eh?" Lennox repeated. "Yes--it's true that if he'd
been like the other Failings, he'd never have been that. Why, Steele,
you couldn't have given that old man a cold if you'd tied him in the
Rogue River overnight. Of course you couldn't count on the line keeping
up forever. But I'll take him, for the memory of his grandfather."
"You're not afraid to?"
"Afraid, Hell! He can't infect those two strapping children of mine.
Snowbird weighs one hundred and twenty pounds and is hard as steel.
Never knew a sick day in her life. And you know Bill, of course."
Yes, Steele knew Bill. Bill weighed two hundred pounds, and he would
choose the biggest of the steers he drove down to the lower levels in
the winter and, twisting its horns, would make it lay over on its side.
Besides, both of the men assumed that Dan must be only in the first
stages of his malady.
And even as the men talked, the train that bore Dan Failing to the home
of his ancestors was entering for the first time the dark forests of
pine and fir that make the eternal background of the Northwest. The wind
came cool and infinitely fresh into the windows of the sleeping car, and
it brought, as camels bring myrrh from the East, strange, pungent odors
of balsam and mountain flower and warm earth, cooling after a day of
blasting sun. And these smells all came straight home to Dan. He was
wholly unable to understand the strange feeling of familiarity that he
had with them, a sensation that in his dreams he had known them always,
and that he must never go out of the range of them again.