Jim's Grand Toot
As Phil knocked the dust from his clothes and wiped the perspiration
from his face, it suddenly struck him that Jim Langford must have been
waiting fully half an hour for him at the Kenora.
He hurried through Chinatown and down toward the hotel. When he
got there, he found Jim in lazy conversation with some passing
acquaintance, whom he immediately left.
"Did you finish what you were after, Phil?"
"You bet!"
"Tell me about it. I wish to size the thing up."
With the exception of his encounter with the Mayor, Phil recounted all
that had happened. He preferred keeping to himself that little bout he
had had with Brenchfield, for he knew Jim already had suspicions that
he and Brenchfield had some old secret antagonism toward each other.
Some day, he thought, he might feel constrained to unburden himself on
the point to Jim, but the time for that did not appear to be ripe.
"Darned funny!" remarked Langford, when Phil concluded. "I can't
recollect the man from your description and there doesn't seem to be
any connection between him and the flour and feed steal. But--what the
devil could that fellow be after, anyway?"
Suddenly, as was his habit, he dismissed the subject and broke in on
another.
"Say, Phil,--know who's in the card-room?"
"No!"
"An old pal of yours!" He commenced to sing a line of an old Scot's
song:--"Rob Roy McGregor O."
"Yes!"
"How's your liver?"
"Don't know I have one--so it must be all right!"
"What do you think about paying off old scores?" Mischief was lurking
in his eyes.
"Oh, let's forget that, Jim! It is too cold-blooded for me."
"Cold-blooded nothing! The dirty skunk didn't look at it that way when
you were as weak as Meeting-house tea and hardly able to stand on your
two pins."
"That's no lie, either!"
"And he'd do it again if he thought it would work."
Phil looked at Jim.
"I guess you are right,--and I feel mad enough to scrap with
anybody."
"Right! Let us work it as near as we can the way he worked it on
you."
They went over to the table near the window and rehearsed quietly
their method of operation, and it was not long before a noise in the
back room signalled the break-up of the card game. Half a dozen
rough-looking fellows from Redmans Creek followed one another out to
the saloon, headed, as usual, by McGregor, straddling his legs and
swaggering, looking round with a cynical twist on his handsome face.
They went over to the bar.
McGregor pushed himself in at the far end, brushing an innocent
individual out of his way in the operation. The man who followed
McGregor wedged himself in next. McGregor slid along and two more
harmless men at the bar gave way. It was an old trick and they knew
how to perform it. Still the McGregor gang pushed in, one after
another, until the entire counter was taken up by the six, who stood
there, legs and elbows sprawled, laughing and jeering at the men they
had displaced and at their lack of courage in not endeavouring to hold
their own.
They stood in this fashion for possibly five minutes, blocking the
counter and not allowing anyone else to get near it.
Suddenly Phil jumped up from his seat and walked over to the bar.
"Say, fellows! Come on all and have a drink on me!" he shouted.
The six at the bar swung round to look at the speaker.
"Come on,--ease up, you ginks!--unless you've hired the Kenora saloon
for the night."
No one moved, so Phil caught the man nearest to him by the belt and
yanked him out deftly. Langford, who was immediately behind Phil,
caught the next one and repeated the performance.
There was a scramble and some of the more aggressive bystanders joined
in to Phil's and Jim's assistance. Then the more timid followed, with
the ultimate result that five of McGregor's gang were dislodged, as a
dozen men crowded alongside and around their champion. McGregor still
held his place defiantly, elbows and legs asprawl as before. Phil was
close up to him, with Jim at Phil's left hand.
"Guess you think you're some kid!" McGregor remarked, spitting a wad
of chewing tobacco on to the floor.
"Quit your scrapping," returned Phil in assumed irritation. "Have a
drink!--it's on me. It isn't often I stand treat. Name your poison!"
"Well,--if that's all you're up to, guess I might as well," he
answered, in reluctant conciliation.
"Come on, fellows! This hell-for-leather blacksmith wants to blow in
his week's wages on drinks. We ain't goin' to stop him."
The bar-tenders served as fast as they could. Phil paid the score,
then turned to have a fresh look at McGregor. The latter was watching
him closely out of the corner of his eyes. He took up his glass.
"Guess you think you're puttin' one over," he snarled. "Well,--you've
got another guess comin'."
He put his tumbler up against Phil's jacket, tilted it deliberately,
sending the contents trickling all the way down Phil's clothes right
to his boot. He looked into Ralston's eyes with a sneer on his face
and slowly set his tumbler on the counter, watching every movement in
the room through narrowed eyes.
Phil's temper flared out and he swung on McGregor with tremendous
quickness.
To his surprise, quick as he was, his fist fell on McGregor's wrist.
In a second, they were in the centre of the room, tables and chairs
were whirled into corners as by magic, and the two were in a ring
formed by a wall of swaying bodies and eager faces, for more than a
few of them had witnessed the previous encounter between the pair and
had been wondering just when the return match would take place.
Phil waited with bated breath for the bull-like rush which he
expected, while Langford's voice could be heard high over the hubbub,
shouting in the Doric to which he had risen in his excitement:--
"Mair room! Gi'e them mair room. Widen oot, can ye no!--widen oot!"
But instead of the rush for grips that Phil anticipated, he found
himself faced by a man, strong as a lion, with arms out in the true
pugilistic attitude. He guessed it for a ruse and a bit of play-acting,
and sprang in. He struck three times for separate parts of the
cowpuncher's body, but each time he struck he encountered a guarding
arm or fist. This more than surprised him, for it was well known that
McGregor's strong and only point was his brute force.
In order to give himself time to think the matter out, Phil sprang
away again.
McGregor's face was sphinx-like in its inscrutable cynicism.
They circled, facing each other like sparring gamecocks of a giant
variety.
Phil, determined on having another try, jumped in on his huge
opponent.
He struck, once--twice. He was about to strike again, when he
staggered back as if he had been hit by a sledge hammer fair on the
chin. The saloon swung head over heels in a whirligig movement. Phil's
arms became heavy as lead and dropped to his side. His legs sagged
under him.
In a state of drugging collapse, he felt himself seized and crushed as
into a pulp; a not unpleasant sensation of swinging, a hurtling
through the air and splintering,--then, well,--that was all.
When he came to, he was being carried up the stairs to his bedroom, to
the accompaniment of Mrs. Clunie's repeated regrets, in broad Scotch,
that it was a pity "weel bred young chiels couldna agree to disagree
in a decent manner, wise-like and circumspectly, withoot fechtin' like
a wheen drucken colliers."
This did not prevent that good lady from washing and binding Phil's
numerous but not very deadly cuts and bruises.
It was two days before he was able to be out of bed, and during these
two days he heard a number of stories, through Mrs. Clunie, of what
had happened at the Kenora Hotel after his hurried exit through the
window. These stories he refused to believe, for his faith in Jim
Langford's ability was too strong to be easily shaken. But one thing
he had to give credence to was, that Jim had not shown face at Mrs.
Clunie's since the night of the trouble.
Mrs. Clunie complained that half a dozen times she had chased "that
hauf-witted, saft sannie o' a daftie, ca'ed Laugher, or Smiler or
something," from the back door, and she was sure he was "efter nae
guid."
On the morning of the third day, Phil, stiff and a little wobbly, set
out for the smithy, where big Sol Hanson welcomed him back with an
indulgent grin.
Hanson had learned all about the affray, as everyone else in town
seemed to have done.
"But has anyone seen Langford?" asked Phil in some concern, as they
discussed the matter.
"Oh, Langford go on one big booze," laughed Sol. "He turn up maybe in
about one month, all shot to hell, then he sober up again for long
time."
"But doesn't anyone know where he is?"
"Sure, sometimes!--maybe at Kelowna, then Kamloops. Somebody see him
at Armstrong, then no see him for another while. Best thing you leave
Jim Langford till he gets good and ready to come back. Only make
trouble any other way. Everybody leave big Jim when he goes on a big
toot."
"Well," said Phil with some decision, "I'm going after him anyway, and
I'm going to stay right with him till he's O.K."
"All right, son--please yourself! We are not so busy now, but I
tell you it no damn good. I know Jim Langford, five, maybe six
year,--see!"
Phil set out to make inquiries.
At the Kenora he heard of someone who had seen Jim the day before at
the town of Salmon Arm, between thirty and forty miles away. He took
the stage there, only to find that Langford had left presumably for
Vernock. Back again he came, and it was late at night when he got to
town. On dropping off the stage, he ran into the faithful Smiler.
"Hullo, kid! You see Jim Langford?" he asked.
Smiler nodded.
"Know where he is?"
He nodded again excitedly, hitching up his trousers which were held
round his middle by a piece of cord.
"Might have known it," thought Phil, "and saved myself a lot of
running about.
"Lead on, MacDuff!" he cried. "Show me Jim Langford and I'll give you
two-bits."
Smiler led the way in the darkness, down a side street into the
inevitable and dimly lit Chinatown. Smiler stopped up in front of the
dirty, dingy entrance of a little hall occasionally used for Chinese
theatricals. He pointed inside with a grin, refused Phil's proffered
twenty-five cents, backing up and finally racing away.
A special performance in Chinese was being given by a troupe of actors
from Vancouver and all Chinatown who could were there.
Phil paid his admission to a huge, square-jawed Chinaman at the
pay-box, and pushed through the swing doors, inside.
The theatre was crowded with Orientals, who, for the most part, were
dirty, vile-smelling and expectorating.
About half-way down the centre of the aisle, he took a vacant seat on
the end of one of the rough, wooden, backless benches which were all
that were provided for the comfort of the audience. The place was very
badly lighted, although the stage stood out in well-illuminated
contrast.
Phil's first anxiety was to locate Jim. He scanned the packed benches,
but all he could see was stolid, gaunt-jawed, slit-eyed Chinamen.
There did not seem to be another white man in the place.
Someone nudged him on the arm. He turned. A sleek Chinaman, whom Phil
had often seen on the streets--the janitor, Phil remembered, for The
Pioneer Traders,--grinned at him.
"You tly catch Missee Langfod?" he whispered.
"Yes!" nodded Phil.
"He down there, flont seat."
Phil looked in the direction indicated and, sure enough, there was
Jim--alone, in the middle of the foremost and only otherwise
unoccupied bench in the hall--all absorbed in the scene that was being
enacted on the platform.
Contented in the knowledge that he now had his friend under
surveillance, Phil directed his interest to the stage, for he had
never before been present at so strange a performance.
The opera, for such it appeared to be, was already under way. The
lady, the Chinese equivalent of a prima-donna--dressed in silks
emblazoned with gold spangles, tinsel and glass jewels, with a strange
head-dress, three feet high, consisting of feathers and pom-pons--was
holding forth in what was intended to be song. It occurred to Phil
that he had thrown old boots at tom-cats in Mrs. Clunie's back-yard
for giving expression to what was sweet melody in comparison.
The actress's face was painted and powdered to a mere mask. Her finger
nails were two inches longer than her four-inch-long feet. She rattled
those fingers nails in a manner that made Phil's flesh creep, although
this action seemed highly pleasing to the audience in general. The
lady, Phil learned from the Chinaman at his side, was a famous
beauty.
The scenery required no description, being merely a number of plain,
movable partitions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no
drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the
audience, removing furniture and knocking down partitions with hammers
during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling passages of the
opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making
strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals
of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind it a bit. The conductor,
in his shirt sleeves, was laying on, alternately, to a Chinese drum
and what looked like two empty cocoanut shells, whacking out a species
of rag-time all on his own, while the two other members of the band
were performing on high-pitched Chinese fiddles, determined evidently
on keeping up the racket at all costs.
Phil noticed no evidence of sheet music, so familiar in a white man's
orchestra. These were real artists and they played entirely from
memory.
In an endeavour to be enlightened, Phil touched a Chinaman in front of
him--for the familiar one at his side had slipped quietly to some
other part of the hall.
"John,--what all this play about--you know?" he asked.
Without turning round, the Oriental sang to him in a top-storey
voice:--
"Lu-wang Kah Chek-tho, chiu-si. Tung-Kwo chi Ku-su. Savvy?"
Phil did not "savvy," but another Chinaman, more obliging and more
English, who introduced himself as Mee Yi-ow, told him the gist of the
tale in pigeon English, up to the point where Phil had come in, so
that he was able to follow the performance with some intelligence,
from there on.
Away back in the middle ages, a bold, bad, blood-thirsty brigand
chief kidnapped the only daughter of the Empress, because of that
young lady's irresistible beauty and charm and because of his own
unquenchable love for her. He, in turn, was trapped and captured by
the Royal Body Guard, who brought him--manacled in chains with cannon
balls at the ends of them--before the haughty Empress. He was
sentenced to death by nibbling--a little piece to be skewered out of
him every two hours, Chinese time.
The Brigand Chief, on the side, was a hand-cuff expert. One day he
managed to slip out of his chains and away from his tiresome cannon
balls. He made a daring dash for liberty, disarming and killing a
sentry. Boldly, he sought out the Captain of the Royal Guard and
fought a very realistic duel with him before the Empress and all the
members of her retinue who came out from the wings specially to
witness the sight.
The rank and file of the Royal Bodyguard--with emphasis on the
_rank_--also stood idly by enjoying the spectacle.
At last, the Brigand Chief slew the Captain of the Guard, and the
latter, as soon as he had finished dying, rose to his feet and walked
calmly off the stage. Then, amid the rattle of drums and empty
cocoanut shells, accompanied by fiddle squeaks, the Royal Guard rushed
upon the Brigand Chief, overpowering him and loading him up afresh
with his lately lamented chains and cannon balls.
A number of influential people--Princes, Mandarins and things,
including the recently kidnapped only daughter of the Empress--pleaded
for the gallant fighter's life.
But,--up to closing time that night--the Empress remained obdurate;
this being absolutely necessary, as the play continued for six
successive evenings.
Throughout the most intensely dramatic incidents, Phil failed to hear
a hand-clap or an ejaculation of admiration or pleasure from the
sphinx-faced yellow men about him. Yet they seemed intensely
interested in the performance.
Cabbages and bad eggs, so dear to the heart of the white actor, would
have been preferable to that funereal silence.
Phil was just thinking how discouraging it must be to be a Chinese
actor, when, by some signal, unintelligible to him, the play ended for
the night. He rose with the audience, made quickly for the only exit
and took up his position on the inside, there to await Jim's arrival.
When the greater portion of the audience had passed out, Jim rose from
his seat in front, picked up a white sheet from a corner of the stage
and whirled it about him, throwing an end of it over his left shoulder
in the manner of the ancient Grecian sporting gentlemen.
From his looks, he had about three days' growth of whiskers on his
face. His eyes, big and dark-rimmed, glowed with an intense inner fire
that would have singled him out from among his fellows anywhere.
Jim was well-known and respected among the Chinamen, the more so
because of his vagaries.
Suddenly, he raised his arm in a rhythmic gesture of appeal. He
uttered one word, arresting and commanding in its intonation:--
"Gentlemen!"
There were not very many gentlemen there, but each one present took
the ejaculation as personal. The little crowd stopped and gathered
round, gazing up with interest at the erect figure in the aisle, white
robed, with hand still outstretched.
After a moment of tense silence, he commenced to recite Burns'
immortal poem on brotherly love.
Never had Phil heard such elocution. The intonation, the fervour and
fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a
mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted,
almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend's
well-being, but he stood at the door listening spellbound, as did the
Orientals about Jim, and the low whites who had straggled in toward
the end of the Chinese performance, half-drunk and doped.
Vigorously, Jim concluded:--
"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."
When he finished there was a round of applause, in which the Chinamen
joined most noisily--an unusual thing for them who had sat throughout
the entire evening's play of their own without the slightest show of
appreciation.
Phil had heard somewhere that Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each
other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this
was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that
the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered
with the true native feeling.
Langford bowed his acknowledgement in a courtly manner, as Sir Henry
Irving might have done before a royal audience.
Some of the maudlin white men shouted for an encore.
Nothing loth, Jim laughingly consented, and a hush went over the
crowd again, for there was a peculiar hypnotism coming from this
erratic individual that commanded the attention of all his listeners.
A little, old, monkey-faced Chinaman, carrying a parcel in his hand,
was standing close by. Langford caught hold of him gently and stood
the bashful individual before him. In paternal fashion he placed his
hand on the greasy, grey head and started impressively into the
farewell exhortation of Polonius to Laertes, out of Hamlet:
"And these few precepts in thy memory.
Look thou to character. Give thy thoughts no tongue
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar"...
On he recited, oblivious of all but the charm of the words he uttered,
careful lest a single phrase might pass his lips without its due
measure of expression. He finished in a whisper; his voice full of
emotion and tears glistening in his deep-set eyes, much to the
amazement of the monkey-face upturned to him.
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Deep silence followed, until the squeaky voice of little monkey-face
broke through:--
"Ya,--you bet,--me savvy!"
It shattered the spell that was on Langford. He laughed, and grabbed
the parcel from the hand of the little Chinaman. He pulled the string
from it and the paper wrappings, exposing a bloody ox-heart which was
destined never to fulfil the purpose for which it was bought.
Throwing off his sheet cloak, Langford became transformed into a
figure of early history. He held the ox-heart high in the air with his
left hand and struck a soldierly attitude.
He was now the famous Black Douglas of Scotland, fighting his last
fight against the Moors in Spain, with the heart of his beloved dead
monarch, Robert Bruce, in the silver casket in which he had undertaken
to carry it to the Holy Land.
Parrying and thrusting with his imaginary sword, gasping, panting in
assumed exhaustion, staggering, recovering and fighting again, then
feigning wounds of a deadly nature, he threw the ox-heart over the
heads of his gaping spectators toward the door, where it fell at
Phil's feet.
"Onward, brave Heart," he cried, "as thou wert wont to be in the
field. Douglas will follow thee or die."
Then, casting his audience on either side of him, like falling
thistles under a sickle, he sprang toward the exit. When he reached
his objective, he stooped to pick up the ox-heart.
Phil smartly placed his foot on it.
Slowly Jim unbent himself, his eyes travelling from the foot that
dared to interfere with his will, up the leg, body and chest, until at
last they stared into the familiar eyes of his friend, who returned
his stare with cold questioning. Thus they looked at each other for a
moment, then Jim's eyes averted. He turned quickly away and passed
into the darkened roadway.
Phil followed, a short step behind.
Jim heard him and quickened his pace. Phil did likewise. Finally he
broke into a run. Phil responded. He ran till his breath began to give
out, but try as he would, Langford could not shake his follower.
There was no sign of any recognition; no word passed between them.
Three or four times they circled Chinatown in this way. Langford
next dropped into a long, swinging stride and started up toward the
railway tracks and out on to the high road of Coldcreek. Doggedly,
limpet-like, Phil kept closely to him.
On, on he walked, mile after mile, untiring, apparently unheeding,
looking neither to right nor left. And on, on, after him, almost at
his side, went his determined friend.
In an hour, Jim cut down a side road and commenced to circle back by
the low road, past the lake and once again toward the fairy, twinkling
lights of Vernock.
The Post Office clock chimed the first hour of a new day, when they
got back.
Jim stopped up in front of a stable, pushed his way inside--for the
door was ajar--tumbled down in a corner among some hay and,
apparently, was soon fast asleep.
Phil dropped down beside him, but did not close his eyes.
And glad he was of it, for, about an hour later, very stealthily Jim
rose on his elbow, looked into Phil's face, and, evidently satisfied
that he was unconscious, rose and made softly for the door.
But when he turned to close it behind him, Phil was right by his
side.
Without a word, Jim changed his mind and went straight back to his hay
bed on the stable floor; and this time he tumbled into a deep sleep.
Phil must have dozed off too, for when he awoke the light of an Autumn
sun was streaming through a dirty window on to his face.
He started up in consternation, but his fears were soon allayed for
Jim Langford was still sleeping peacefully, dead to the world, with an
upturned face tranquil and unlined, and innocent-looking as a baby
boy's.
The work horses in their stalls were becoming restless. Phil examined
his watch. It was six o'clock.
He knew that the teamster would soon be on his job getting his beasts
ready for their day's work, so he roused Langford, who sat up in a
semi-stupor, licking his lips with a dry, rough tongue.
He gazed at Phil for a while. Phil smiled in good humour.
"Man, but I'm a rotter!" said Jim.
"Of course you are!" agreed Phil. "We're both more or less rotters."
"But that son of a lobster McGregor knocked you cold," he pursued,
starting in where he had left off several days before.
"He did, Jim, and threw me through the window to wind up with."
"And I'm the man that knows it, too. Lord!--but I'm as dry as if I had
been eating salt fish for a week."
"And you can have a nice, big drink of fresh water at the trough
outside whenever you are ready."
"Water, Phil! Have a heart!"
"Sure thing! Good fresh water!"
"'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,'" he quoted.
And sitting up, there among the hay, a strangely assorted pair they
seemed as they conversed familiarly.
"Well,--I fancy I've had about enough this trip."
"You certainly have!"
"Ay, Phil,--but think of that big shrimp knocking us soft."
"_Us_, did you say?" put in Phil. "Then it is true, after all?"
"What?"
"That he finished you off after he put me to sleep!"
Langford tried to spit in disgust, but despite the greatness of his
disgust his mouth and salivic glands refused to function.
"Oh, man!--it makes me sick. The big, long-legged, red-haired devil
has been learning to box on the quiet. And to think that he had that
up his sleeve, and was just waiting for us!"
"Tell me what happened after I got mine, Jim. I haven't heard it right
yet."
"Everything happened. I went out and picked you up. I got some of the
boys to take you home after I knew that you weren't really booked for
'The Better Land.' Then I went back to lick the stuffing out of Rob
Roy. He was in there, grinning and throwing out his chest like a
pouter pigeon."
"'You want the same dose?' he asked.
"'That's what I came for,' said I. And, Phil, between you and me,
that's just about what I got.
"We fought in the bar-room for three-quarters of an hour. I never hit
him worth a rap, for he had a defence like the Rock o' Gibraltar. He
didn't hit me very often, either, but when he did,--Oh, Lord! Well, to
make a short story for a thirsty man, we had to quit, both of us, from
sheer exhaustion. When we could hardly stand, the Mayor came in and
separated us. He sent McGregor and his gang slap-bang home to Redmans.
And after that--well, they filled me up to the neck. Oh, I was quite
ready to be filled, Phil, for my pride was sorely humbled. And--I've
been filled up to the neck ever since.
"What day is it, Phil?"
"Wednesday!"
"This week, last week or next week?"
"This week!"
"Is that all? And it happened only last Saturday. Man!" he cried,
springing up, "if that's the case, I've only started."
"You have finished," said Phil decidedly, "finished good and plenty,
now and for all."
"But man,--think o' my reputation. I always have a month of it."
"Not this time!"
"But I've done it for years. Think o' tradition!"
"Tradition be-darned! If you do, I'll have a month of it, too."
"That's pure blarney, Phil. You're not that kind."
"No, but I shall be. See if I won't, if you don't quit."
Jim looked into Phil's eyes and he saw a determination in them that he
knew he could never shake, and, knowing his own weakness, he would
have killed Phil rather than see him in the same plight.
"Man!" he exclaimed in perplexity, "I do believe you would."
"Try me and you'll soon find out."
They sat silently for a time. Suddenly Phil broke in.
"Come on,--what is it to be? Back into decency or a month of hell?" he
asked.
Jim Langford got to his feet.
"Lead on, old chum," he said. "Me for a bath, a shave, a good
breakfast and--honest toil."