ACROSS THE MONTHS.
The next two years came and went in Grizzly county without any events
to be chronicled in the city press--no strikes or rich finds or
stirring deeds; yet they were years that counted much in some lives.
Job went back to the mines, no longer behind the pay window, but as
assistant superintendent. Never had so young a man had so responsible
a place at the Yellow Jacket. The negotiations and intercourse with
the outside world, and the complicated plans of a great company, were
not his task. He was the soul of the mine. His it was to deal with the
"hands," and stand between them and that intangible, soulless thing
men call a corporation. He was the prophet of the company and priest
pleading the needs of five hundred men at the doors of the directors.
There was nothing in the laws of the company defining his position,
and he could hardly have defined it himself. He only knew that he was
there to make life a little brighter, home a little more sacred, the
friction of business a little less, the higher part of manhood more
valuable, to five hundred hard-working men of all creeds and races
that lived on the bare mountain-side about the Yellow Jacket mine.
It was marvelous the changes that came. Personal influence and social
power told as the days went by. The saloon-keepers felt it and
grumbled, but the assistant superintendent was too great a favorite
for them to dare say much. The Sunday work ceased. Every improvement
for bettering the conditions under which the men worked was put
in--better air-pumps; a large shaft-house with dressing-rooms for the
men, to save them from going out while heated, to be exposed to
winter's cold; a hospital for the sick; lower prices at the company's
store; Finnegan's saloon enlarged and fitted up as a temperance
club-house, with not a drop of liquor, but plenty of good cheer. More
than once on Sundays Job talked to the men on eternal themes, from a
spot where, on a never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, he had once faced a
mob.
At last the company built a large, plain, attractive church, and the
miners insisted on Job's being the "parson." But he firmly declined
the honor. Yet he had his say about that church. He felt a wee bit of
pride when, crowded to the doors with Scandinavians, Irishmen,
Mongolians, Englishmen and Americans, with the Mexican and stalwart
Indian not left out, he saw the preacher on the Frost Creek circuit
and the priest from Gold City ascend the pulpit to dedicate it. It was
to be for all faiths that point heavenward, all ethics that teach the
mastery of self, all creeds that exalt Jesus Christ, all religions
that really bind back to God. The company had said it; and the men
knew that that meant Job.
It was a strange service. The Catholic choir sang "Adeste Fideles,"
and they all bowed and said the prayer of prayers. Some said "Our
Father" and some "Paternoster," and they all meant the same. Job felt
a strange thrill in his soul as all in the great audience joined in
the last reverent "Amen." Both clergymen spoke, and when the preacher
named the Savior, the Catholics crossed themselves; and when the
priest said "Blessed Jesus," the Methodists responded "Amen." Both men
caught the spirit of the hour; bigotry, creeds, conventionalities,
were forgotten. They were face to face with hungry souls; with men who
knew little of theology and ecclesiasticism, but much of actual life.
God, sin, manhood, eternity, seemed very real to those speakers that
day, and they made it plain to the tear-stained, sin-scarred faces
that looked into theirs. When at last it was over and the priest had
said "Dominus vobiscum" and the parson said "amen," Job slipped out of
the rear door to escape the crowd and to pray for the Yellow Jacket
and its five hundred men, while a voice whispered to his soul,
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye have done
it unto me."
These years had made great changes in Andrew Malden. Since that
night-watch at Pine Tree Ranch, he had been a different man. Tony and
Hans felt it; the mill men commented on it; the world of Gold City
began to realize that the master of Pine Tree Mountain possessed a
heart. The old town had more public spirit than for years, and
everybody knew that it was "Judge" Malden, inspired by a life close to
his own, who was back of all the improvements. But not everybody was
pleased with his influence in public matters, and when the Board of
Supervisors one spring refused to renew the license of the Monte
Carlo, and passed an ordinance against gambling, all the baser element
in Gold City united in bitter hatred against the one who they knew
possessed the political power that brought these things to pass.
From that day Grizzly county saw an immense struggle for supremacy
between righteousness and vice, in the persons of the two political
leaders, Andrew Malden and "Col. Dick." Col. Dick was the most
clerical-looking man in the community. Always dressed in immaculate
white shirt, long coat and white tie, with his smooth face and
piercing black eyes, no stranger would have dreamed, as he received
his polite bow on the street, that this was the most notorious
character in Grizzly county, the manipulator of its politics, the
proprietor of its worst haunt, the most heartless man who ever stood
behind a bar in a mining camp. But Richard Lamar--or, as all
familiarly knew him, Col. Dick, in honor of his traditional war
record--was all this. For nearly twenty years he had stood coolly
behind that bar mixing drinks and planning politics. All men feared
him. Only one man ever refused to drink with him, so far as is known,
and then everybody who could, steered clear of jury duty on that case,
and those who could not escape pronounced his death due to
heart-failure.
The election the next year was the most hotly contested ever held in
the county. Job used all the personal influence he had in the Yellow
Jacket; Andrew Malden himself personally canvassed every house in the
county where there was the slightest hope. Tony said, "Bress de Lawd!
guess de old Marse and de gray team done gone de rounds, an' ebery dog
in de county knows 'em!"
Dan, poor Dan, limping through the crowd on crutches, was Col. Dick's
chief lieutenant, and used with the utmost shrewdness the "cash" which
the saloon interest placed at his disposal. He knew by election day
the price of every salable vote in the county. The night before
election excitement ran high; a scurrilous sheet came out with
cartoons of Andrew Malden and "Gambler Teale's kid." All the hard
things that could be said were said. That night, before an audience
that filled the old church and hung on the windows and packed the
steps, Job made a speech which thrilled the souls of them all. He told
his life story; told of what rum had done for him and his, told of
Yankee Sam and the scene at his death, till hardened men wiped away
the tears. No cut-and-dried temperance lecture was his. He talked of
life as all knew it, of Gold City and facts no one could deny; talked
till waves of deepest emotion passed over the crowd like the wind over
grain on the far-reaching prairies. The meeting broke up with cheers
and hisses, and men went out to face a fight at the polls that was
talked of for many a long day afterward.
The ringing of the old church bell at dark on election day, the cheers
sounding everywhere up and down the streets, the sour, scowling faces
of Col. Dick and Dan as they slunk down the alley and in back of the
Monte Carlo, told a story which thrilled the hearts of good
citizens--that righteousness and good government had won.
That night, between midnight and dawn, Andrew Malden's lumber mill
went up in flame and smoke. Who did it? No one knew; no one doubted.
The north wind was blowing, and the mill hands worked vigorously,
worked heroically--it meant bread and butter to them--but they could
not save it. Only great heaps of ashes, twisted iron, a lone
smoke-stack and great piles of ruined machinery, were left to tell the
story, where for many years the whirl of industry had made music
beside Pine Tree Creek.
Yet the man who had once sworn to shoot his enemy at sight uttered no
complaint or showed the least spirit of revenge. He came and stood in
the night air and watched the flames lick up the old mill, stood with
the ruddy glow lighting up his furrowed face, and with never a word
turned and went home.
Dan was drifting further and further into the downward life; and yet,
strange to say, it had lost its charm for him. That night when the
election failed and Col. Dick scored him for not doing his best, he
parted company with the Colonel and the Monte Carlo. More and more
strongly two passions ruled his life. One was love for Jane Reed; the
love of a man conscious of his own utter badness for that holy life he
secretly envies and outwardly scorns. The other was hatred for Job
Malden, who, ever since he came upon the stage in the long ago, had
stood between Daniel Dean and all his ambitions.
So the world moved on, the world of Grizzly county, hid away among the
grand old mountains and lofty pines of the Sierras. Impulses were
passing into deeds; actions and thoughts were crystallizing into
character--character that should endure when the pines had passed into
dust, when the mountains had tottered beneath the hand of the Creator,
when earth itself had sunk into endless space and the story of Gold
City had forever ended.
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