THE INCONSISTENT BULLY
"Them beans," declared the fat cook, plaintively, "looks as if they
had been put through some sort of shrivelin' process. The dried prunes
are sure dry all right! Must have been put up about the time they
dried them mummy things back in Egypt. Apuricots? Humph! I soaked some
of 'em all day and to-night took one over to the shop and cut it open
with a chisel to see if it was real leather, or only imitation. The
canned salmon, and the canned tripe is all swells so that the cans is
round instead of flat on the ends. I reckon you'd better go down and
see that storekeeper. I dassen't! If I did I'd probably lose my temper
and wallop him. If somebody don't go, the men here'll be makin' a
mistake, blamin' it on me, and I can't exactly see how they could keep
from hangin' me, if they want to do justice."
He had stood in the doorway of the office to voice his complaint, and
now, without further words walked away toward his own particular
section of the little camp village.
"So that's the way that trader down there filled the order, is it?"
Dick said, frowning at his companion.
The latter merely grunted and then offered a solution.
"Probably," he said, "that stuff was sent up here without bein'
opened, just as he got it. If that's so it ain't his fault. About half
the rows in life come from takin' things for granted. The other half
because we know too well how things did happen."
He stood up and stretched his arms.
"What do you say we go down and hear what the trader has to say? If
he's square he'll make good. If he ain't--we'll make him!"
Taking it for granted that the younger man would accompany him, he was
already slipping off his working shirt and peering around the corners
of the room for his clean boots. Dick hesitated and had to be urged.
He wondered then if it were not possible that something beside the
errand to the trader's caused Bill's eagerness; but wisely kept the
idea to himself.
The camp was in the dusk when they entered it, the soft dusk that
falls over early summer evenings in the hills, when everything in
nature seems drowsily awaiting the night. They thought there was an
unusual hush in the manner of those they met. Men talked on the
corners or in groups in the roadway with unaccustomed earnestness.
Women leaned across window sills and chatted across intervening spaces
with an air of anxiety; the very dogs in the street appeared to be
subdued. At the trader's there was not the usual small gathering of
loungers, squatted sociably around on cracker boxes and packing cases,
and the man with the twang was alone.
"Say, there's something wrong with that stuff you sent us," Bill
began, and the trader answered with a soft, absent-minded, "So?"
Bill repeated the words of the cook; but the storekeeper continued to
stare out of the door as if but half of what was said proved
interesting.
"I'll send up and bring it back to-morrow," he replied when the miner
had concluded his complaint. "The fact is it's a job lot I bought in
Portland, and I didn't look at it. Came in yesterday. I ain't--I ain't
exactly feelin' right. I suppose you heard about it?"
The partners looked at him questioningly, but he did not shift his
eyes from the door through which he still appeared to be staring away
into the distance, and it was easy to conjecture, from the expression
of his eyes, that he was seeing a tragedy.
"I'm sort of busted up," he went on, without looking at them. "You see
I had a brother over there. A shift boss, he was. Him and me was more
than brothers. We was friends. It don't seem right that Hiram was down
there, in the dark, when the big cave came--came just as if the whole
mountain wanted to smash them men under it. It don't seem right! I
can't quite get it all yet. I'm goin' over there on the stage in the
mornin'. He's left a widder and a couple of little shavers. I'm goin'
to bring 'em here."
"We don't quite understand you," Dick said, hesitatingly, and with
sympathy in his voice. "We haven't heard about it--whatever it is. I'm
sorry if----"
The trader straightened up from where he had been leaning on his
elbows across the counter and they saw that his face was drawn.
"Oh, I see," he said, in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you
men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has
anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across
the divide--on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with
crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of
water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over
there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. Thirty odd men
back of it. Timbers went off, they say, like a gatlin' gun. I just
can't seem to understand how they didn't handle that ground better. It
don't look right to me!"
He stooped and twisted his fingers together and the palms of his hands
gave out dry, rasping sounds. His attitude seemed inconsistent with
the immobility of his face, but Dick surmised that he was trying to
regain control of his emotions. He had a keen desire to know more of
the particulars of the tragedy, but sensed from the storekeeper's
appearance that he was scarcely able to give a coherent account of it.
His words had already told his sorrow. Bill's voice broke the pause.
"We're right sorry we bothered you about the supplies," he said,
softly. "But we didn't know, you see. I reckon we ain't in any big
hurry. You just take your time about fixin' it up. We can live on most
anything for a day or two."
The storekeeper looked at him gratefully and then lowered his eyes
again. He turned away from them with a long sigh.
"Nope," he said. "Much obliged. I'll send my man up to-morrow.
Business keeps a-goin' on just the same, no matter who passes out. If
you or me died to-night, the whole world would just keep joggin'
along. I'll send up."
They turned and walked out, feeling that anything they could say would
be useless, and sound hollow, and they did not speak until they were
some distance farther up the street.
"He's hard hit, poor cuss!" Bill said. "Wonder what the rest of it
was. Lets go on up toward the High Light. Seems as if it must have
been pretty bad. What's the commotion down there?"
Ahead of them they saw men clustering toward a central point, and
others who had been in the street hurrying forward to be absorbed into
the group. They quickened their steps a trifle, speculating as to
whether it could mean a brawl, or something relating to the disaster
of which they had just learned. It proved the latter. A man was
standing in the center of the gathering crowd with the reins of a
tired horse hanging loosely over his arm. He was talking to the
doctor, who was asking him questions.
"No," Bill and Dick heard him say as they crowded into the group,
"there ain't nothin' you can do, Doc. It's all over with 'em. I was
there until quite late. God! It's awful!"
"Anybody get out at all?" someone asked.
"No. That's a cinch. You see they were driving back in and feeling for
the ledge. Blocking out, I think. Pretty lean ore, over there, you
know. So there was just one drift away from the shaft, and it was in
that she caved."
There was a moment's silence and then a half-dozen questions asked
almost in the same moment. The man turned first to one and then to
another as if striving to decide which query should be answered first,
and shook his head hopelessly.
"They didn't have a chance," he asserted. "It happened three days ago,
as you all know. They sent over to Arrapahoe and all the boys over
there went and volunteered. They worked just as many men as could get
into the drift at a time, and they spelled each other in half-hour
shifts, so's every man could do his best. They hadn't got in twenty
feet before they saw that she was bad. Seemed as if the whole drift
had been wiped out. It was as solid as rock in place--just as if the
whole mountain had slipped!"
"Did you go down, Jim?" the doctor asked.
For reply the man held up his hands. Dick, close behind him and
peering forward to see them in the light that came from a street lamp,
saw they were a mass of blisters with the skin torn away, red and
bleeding. The answer was too eloquent to require words for the man
they called Jim had evidently been there and striving madly, as had
others, in the attempt to rescue. There was a surge forward as the
crowd pressed in, each man trying to inspect these evidences of the
tragedy. The questions were coming faster and from all sides. Most
frequently the anxious demand, coupled with a pronounced eagerness
was, "Is there anything any of us can do? Can we help if we get over
there?"
"How far over is it?" Bill asked the man nearest him.
"Forty-miles," was the answer. They were all willing to travel that
far, or farther, if they could be of any assistance whatever.
"No, there's no use in going," the man in the center said. "There's
more men there now than can be handled, and all they're doing is to
try to get at the boys' bodies. It's sure that they can't live till
they're taken out. You all know that! They're gone, every one of 'em.
And that ain't the worst. They left twenty-six widows, most of 'em
with children!"
A groan went up from the crowd. The word passed back along like the
waves cast up by a rock thrown into the center of a pool of blackness.
It began at the center with its repetition as the words were conveyed
to those out of earshot. "He says there's twenty-six widows. He says
there's a lot of children."
The questions were flowing inward again.
"No, boys, there ain't a thing you can do," the man they called Jim
repeated. "That is, there ain't a thing can be done for the boys
underground. They're gone; but somebody ought to do what can be done
for them that's left. It's money that helps the most. That's the best
way to show that most all of us had friends who went out."
He turned and climbed back into his saddle in the little open space,
and there was another moment's silence. The crowd looked up at him
now, as he sat there in the center of the light thrown downward,
feebly, from the lamp.
"Give me room, boys, won't you?" he asked. "My cayuse is about all in.
There ain't nothing more to tell. There ain't a thing you can do; but
just what I said. Those women and children will need money. They're
all broke."
The crowd slowly parted and he rode through a narrow lane where his
stirrups brushed against those in the front ranks, and then the
gathering began to twist backward and forward, to disintegrate, to
spread itself outward and up the street of the camp. It talked in a
subdued way as it went. There were but few in it who did not know and
picture the meaning of all that had been imparted by the courier--the
desperate alarm, the haggard, sobbing women in front of a hoist, the
relays of men who were ready to descend and beat hammer on steel and
tear madly at slow-yielding rock, the calls for a rest while
carpenters hastily propped up tottering roofs and walls, the
occasional warning shouts when men fell back to watch other huge
masses of rock fall into the black drift, and the instants when some
rescuer, overwrought, thought he heard sounds of "rock telegraphing"
and bade the others pause and listen. There were those among the men
on the street who had seen the desperate, melancholy conclusions, when
hope, flaming ever more feebly, guttered out as a burned candle and
died. There were those among them who had been in those black holes of
despair and been rescued, to carry scars of the body for life, but
recklessly forget the scars of the mind, the horrors of despair.
Comparative strangers to the camp as were the two men of the Cross,
they appreciated the full meaning of the blow; for doubtless there was
scarcely a man around them who had not known some of those who
perished in that terrible, lingering agony. Besides they were miners
all.
"Pretty tough luck, isn't it?"
They found themselves confronted by the doctor, who had turned at the
sound of their voices as they resumed conversation.
"We just learned of it," Dick answered, "and know scarcely anything
whatever of it, save what we just heard."
The doctor shook his head.
"It has been almost the sole topic here for the last two days," he
said. "We heard of it after it was too late for any of us to be of
use. I started over, but got word from a confrere of mine from a camp
farther east, that there were already four doctors on the spot and
that I need not come unless they called for me. Even then they were
hopeless. Most of the men of the Blackbird were good men, too. The
kind that have families, and are steady; but I suppose from what I
hear they were nearly all fellows who have been idle for some time, or
have just moved into the district, so probably they had nothing much
to leave in the way of support--for those left behind."
He stopped for a moment and peered at other men who were passing
them.
"I think it my duty to do something in that regard," he said, quietly.
"I believe I shall get Mrs. Meredith to call a meeting out in front of
her place. Nearly every man of the camp goes there at some time or
another, in the course of the evening. Perhaps I could--"
Again he stopped, as if thinking of the best plan.
"I see," interpolated the miner, almost as his younger companion was
about to offer the same suggestion. "Let her send out word that every
man in the camp is wanted. Then you give them the last news and get
them to do what they can. That's right."
"It is the best way," asserted Dick, agreeing with the project. "You
can do more than any one. They all respect and know you."
They left him to make his way toward the High Light and stood at the
borders of little gatherings on the street, gleaning other details of
the tragedy, for nearly an hour, and then were attracted by a sound
below them. Men were calling to one another. Out in front of the High
Light two torches flared, their flames glowing steadily in the still
night air and lighting the faces of those who gathered toward them.
They went with the street current and again found themselves in a
crowd; but it was not so dense as that first one they had encountered.
Men stood in groups, thoughtfully, with hands in pockets, their harsh,
strong faces rendered soft by the light. They talked together with a
quiet and sad sympathy, as if in that hour they were all of one family
up there in the heart of the mountains from which they tore their hard
livelihood. There was a stir from the nearest store and a voice
called, "Here, Doc! Here's a couple of boxes for you to stand on so
they can see you when you talk."
Men were carrying some large packing cases, or tumbling them end over
end, with hollow, booming noises, to form a crude platform. The boxes
clashed together. Two men holding the torches climbed up on them and
they saw two others boosting the doctor upward. At sight of him there
was a restraining hiss passed round through the gathering crowd,
commanding silence. He waited for it to become complete.
"Men," he said, "you have all heard the news. Thirty-three of our
fellows died over across the divide, or are dying now. God knows
which! God grant they went quickly!"
He stopped and although not a trained orator, the pause could have
been no more effective. Dick looked around him. The faces of those
nearest were grave and unmoved, as if carved from the mother rock of
the country in which they delved; but he saw a light in their frowning
eyes that told how deeply their sympathies were stirred.
"I didn't get up here to talk to you so much about them, however," the
doctor went on, quietly, "as I did to remind you that out of
thirty-three of these men there were twenty-six who left widows, or
widows and children behind them. The boys over there did all they
could. There were a hundred and fifty men who tried to save them. They
are now working merely to get their bodies. We couldn't be there to
help in that; so we do what we can here. And that doing shall consist
in helping out those women and children. There's a box down here in
front of me. I wish you'd put what you can on it."
Bill, staring over the heads of those around him, saw a movement among
those nearest the orator's stand, and into the ring of light stepped
The Lily. Apparently she was speaking to the doctor, who leaned down
to listen. He straightened up and called for silence.
"Mrs. Meredith," he said, "says that any man here who has no money
with him can sign what he wants to give on a piece of paper, and that
she will accept it as she would a pay-check and forward the cash. Then
on pay-day the man can come and redeem his paper pledge."
There was a low murmur of approval swept round over the crowd which
began to move forward with slow regularity. The doctor dropped down
from his rostrum as if his task were done. The torches lowered as
their bearers followed him and planted them beside the box on which
coins, big round silver dollars and yellow gold-pieces, were falling,
with here and there a scrap of paper. No one stood guard over that
collection. The crowd was thinning out. Dick turned toward his friend
and looked up at him to meet eyes as troubled as his own. Each
understood the other.
"I wish I had some money of my own," the younger man exclaimed; "but I
haven't a dollar that actually belongs to me. I am going to borrow a
little from Sloan."
"I can't do that much," was the sorrowful reply. "And there ain't
nothin' I'd rather do in the world than walk up there and drop a
couple of hundred on that pile. I'm--I'm--"
His manner indicated that he was about to relapse into stronger terms.
He suddenly whirled. A hand had been laid on his sleeve and a low,
steady voice said, "Excuse me, I heard you talking and I understand. I
know what you feel. I want you to permit me."
It was Mrs. Meredith who had walked around behind them unobserved and
now held out her hand. They fell back, embarrassed. She appeared to
fathom their position.
"I know," she said. "I wasn't eavesdropping. I saw you here. I wanted
to talk to you both and so, well, I overheard. Take this, won't you?
Please permit me."
Bill suddenly reached his hand out and found in his palm a roll of
bills, rare in that camp. He looked at them curiously.
"There is five hundred dollars in it," she said. "That permits a
reasonable gift from each of you. You can return it to me at your
convenience."
Neither of them had spoken to her in all this time. Now both voiced
thanks. But a moment later Dick found himself talking alone and
telling her that he would send her a check within a few days to cover
the amount of the loan; but she was not looking at him. He saw that
her eyes were fixed on the big man by his side, who stood there
looking down into her face. For some reason she appeared embarrassed
by that direct scrutiny, and her eyes fell, and wandered around on
those standing nearest. Suddenly she frowned, and wondering they
followed the direction of her look. Not ten feet from them, standing
stockily on his feet with his high, heavy shoulders squared, his hands
thrust deep into his pockets, his firm face unmoved, his hat shading
his eyes, stood Bully Presby. He made no movement toward the goal of
the contributors, and seemed to have no intention of so doing. As if
to escape an unpleasant situation The Lily suddenly walked toward
him.
"Good-evening, Mister Presby," she saluted, and he slowly turned his
head and stared at her. He did not shift his attitude in the least,
and appeared granite-like in his rigid pose.
"I suppose," she said, "that you have put something into the
contribution."
"I have not," he replied with his customary incisive, harsh voice.
"Why should I? The contribution means nothing to me."
The brutality, the inhumanity of his words made her recoil for an
instant, and then she recovered her fearlessness and dignity.
"I might have known that," she said, coolly. "I should have expected
nothing more from you. The lives of these--all these--" and she
gestured toward those around--"mean nothing to you. Nor the sufferings
and poverties of those dependent on them."
"Certainly not," he answered with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on
his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are
useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a
part of the general scheme. They are for me to use."
His words were like a challenge. He watched her curiously as if
awaiting her reply. Dick felt Bill starting forward, angrily, then
checked him.
"Wait!" he whispered. "Let's hear what he has to say."
The Lily took a step forward to arraign him. Her face shone whiter
than ever in the light of the torches.
"And that is all? That is your attitude?"
He did not answer, but stared at her curiously. It seemed to anger her
more.
"I wonder," she said, "if you would care for my estimate of you! I
wonder if you would care for the estimate of those around you. It does
not seem strange that you are called by the fitting sobriquet of
'Bully Presby.' You are that! You are one of those shriveled souls
that fatten on the toil of others--that thrive on others' misfortunes
and miseries. My God! A usurer--a pawnbroker, is a prince compared to
you. You are without compassion, pity, charity or grace. Your code is
that of winning all, the code of greed! Listen to me. You doubtless
look down on me as a camp woman, and with a certain amount of scorn!
But knowing what I am, I should far rather be what I am, the owner of
the High Light, a sordid den, than to be you, the owner of the
Rattler, the man they call Bully Presby!"
To their astonishment he leaned his head back and laughed, deeply,
from his chest, as if her anger, her scorn, her bitter denunciation,
had all served to amuse him. It was as if she had flattered him by her
characterizations. She was too angry to speak and stood regarding him
coldly until he had finished. He turned and appeared for the first
time to observe the men of the Croix d'Or scowling at him, and his
laugh abruptly stopped. He scowled back at them, and, without so much
as a good-night salutation turned and walked away and lost himself in
the shadows of the street.
"Oh," she said, facing them and clenching her hands, "sometimes I hate
that man! He is unfathomable! There have been times when I wondered if
he was human."
She bit her lip as if to restrain her words, and then looked up at the
partners.
"And there are times," drawled the big miner, "when I wonder how long
I'll be able to keep my hands off of him. And one of those times has
been in the last minute! If you think it would do any good, I'll--"
She looked up at him and smiled, for the first time since they had
met. She interrupted him.
"No, the only way you can do any good is to make your contribution.
I'll go with you."
They walked together toward the box which was now deserted, save by
the doctor and one other, who were scooping the money into a water
pail they had secured somewhere. Bill threw his roll of bills into it
and the doctor looked up and smiled.
"I knew you would come," he said. "And that, with the two thousand
that Mrs. Meredith has volunteered--"
She checked him.
"That was to be my secret. Please, none of you, speak of it again."
"As you wish," replied the doctor. "And I apologize. Now I would
suggest that you take charge of this and take it to the High Light.
I'll send it over to-morrow by Jim. The boys have done well."
That was all he said, and yet in his simple sentence was much. The
camp had done well. He straightened up with an air of weariness.
"This pail is pretty heavy," he said. "Won't you take it, Mathews, and
carry it over?"
The miner caught it up in his arms, fearing lest the bail break loose
under its weight. The doctor bade them good night, and they started
toward the High Light, leaving the torch man to extinguish his flares.
She talked freely as she walked between them, expressing her relief
that none of the destitute in that distant camp of mourning would
suffer unduly after the receipt of Goldpan's offering. As they entered
the house of the lights and noise the bartender nearest hailed her,
wiped his hands on his apron and reached out an envelope.
"Bully Presby was in here about an hour or two ago," he said, "and
left this. It was before you and Doc Mills was goin' out to try and
get the boys interested."
She tore it open, then flushed, and passed it to the partners who
together read it.
"I hear," the letter read, "that some of the men who were killed
over at the Blackbird used to work for me down in California. Also
that there are some women and children over there who may have a
hard time of it. Will you see to it that this goes to the right
channels, and regard it as confidential? I don't want to appear to be
a philanthropist on even a small scale. Presby."
Pinned to the letter was a check. It was for ten thousand dollars.
Bill lifted it in his fingers, scanned each word, then handed it to
Mrs. Meredith who stood frowning with her eyes fixed on the floor.
"I've known burros, and other contrary cusses, in my time," he said,
slowly, "but this feller Presby has 'em all lookin' as simple, and
plain, and understandable, as a cross-roads guide-post."
And The Lily, contrite, agreed.