STACKING THE CARDS
Bat straddled the slab and lighted his pipe.
"Old man been giving you some good advice?"
"I don't know whether you'd call it good or not. Let's heap the logs
on, Brydges, and make the shadows dance."
Brydges did some hard thinking and let the Ranger do the heaping.
"Sort of razzle-dazzler, MacDonald's daughter; she's a winner; but you
can't get at her! Sort of feel when she's talking to you as if her
other self was 'way down East. Wonder what the old curmudgeon brought
her back here for? If she'd let down her high airs a peg, she'd have
every fellow in the Valley on a string. She could have Moyese's scalp
now if she wanted it--all that's left of it?"
"You can bunk inside! I'll take the hammock." Wayland emerged from
the cabin trailing a gray blanket and a lynx skin robe. Bat continued
to emit smoke in puffs and curls and wreaths at the top of the trees.
"How many acres do you patrol, Dickie?"
"About a hundred-thousand."
"Is that all? How many horses does the Govment allow?"
"None! Buy our own!"
"Great Guns! And you're loyal to that kind of Service? It's bally
loyal I'd be! Why, Moyese allows me the use of any bronch on his
ranch; and, when there's a quick turn to be made, it's a motor car.
Why don't you let me send you up a couple of Moyese's nags? You could
pasture 'em here and get their use for nothing. I could do that right
off my own responsibility. Need be no connection with the old man."
"Bat," said the Ranger, "did you stay up here to say that to me?"
"I don't know whether I did or not; but, now that I _am_ here, I say it
anyway; and I say a whole lot more--don't be a bally fool and buck into
a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What
are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten
feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves,
and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and all that? You
can't buck the combination, Dick! It isn't only Moyese! He's a mere
tool himself in this game. It's the Ring you're up against, and you
can chase yourself all your life round that Ring, and never get
anywhere. The big dubs at Washington, the politicians, they are only
spokes themselves in that wheel. If you buck into that wheel, you get
yourself tangled into a pulp; and if any of those dubs down in
Washington thinks he won't fit into the Ring, why he'll find himself
broken and jerked out so quick he won't know what has happened till he
sees the Wheel going round again with a new spoke in his place."
"Bat, did you stay up here to say that to me?"
"No, I did not." With a twig Bat pushed down the tobacco in his pipe.
"I stayed up here, if you want to know, because we were on our way to
the cow camp when the parson and his kid joined us. I guess every man
has his limit. That cow-camp gang is mine. I want to live a little
longer; and I don't want to know things that might make it useful for
me to die. When Moyese wants to deal with that gang, he can go it
alone."
"Brydges," said Wayland, "you have given me some frank advice. _I'm_
going to reciprocate. You know what is going on out here. You know
why that Arizona gang comes up here. You know why we can't touch
them--they are off the Range of the Forest. You know about the stolen
coal for the Smelter Ring, thousands of acres of it; and the stolen
timber limits for the Lumber Ring, millions of acres of them. If the
public knew, Bat, we'd win our fight. It would be a walk over. Every
man jack of them would lie down, and stay put. Why don't you tell in
your paper? Why don't you tell the truth when you send the dispatches
East? If you did, Bat, we could clean out the gang in a month. Why
don't you play the game a man should play? Every newspaper man likes a
clean sporty fight; and no knifing in the back. Why don't you put up
that fight for us, now, Brydges, and stop giving us side jabs?"
Brydges' pipe fell from his teeth.
"Wayland--what in hell--do you think--I'm working for?"
There was a big silence.
The look of masterdom came back to Wayland's face; but he paused,
looking straight ahead in space. Perhaps he was looking for the hard
grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of
clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his
eye became a blank.
"You are at least sincere, Brydges," he said. Bat gathered up his
shattered pipe.
"I'm not a past-master, _yet_," he said. "I haven't reached the point
where I can believe my own lies; so I don't tell 'em and get caught.
I've dug down in the mortuaries of other men too often--long as a man
doesn 't believe his own lies, he's on guard and doesn't get caught.
It's when he comes ping against a buzz-saw and finds it's a fact that
he has to pay or back down or lose out. You can't budge a fact, damn
it! Thing always shows the same!"
Bat had found the pieces of his pipe. Fitting the meerschaum to the
wood, he had gained confidence and was going ahead full steam.
"Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place
where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the
beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If
he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did
do it all the same, he wouldn't have believed his own lie and got all
tangled up. One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his
paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying
himself: do it and go ahead! Fact is, Dick, I look on a newspaper man
same as I do a lawyer: he has his price; and he finds his market for
his wares; and it's none of his business what his private convictions
are of the right or wrong. He's paid to defend or attack like a
lawyer; and he goes ahead--"
"And doesn't pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat?
Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me if I grin."
"Who's the old party talking to your road gang down by the white tent?"
asked Brydges, pointing where the Range sloped down to the Homestead
Settlement and a long canvass bunk house marked the domicile of the
road hands for the Forests.
"Oh, no, you don't get away from the argument so easily, Bat! You make
the Senator's job and your job and public service all round a bunco
game, a bunco game with marked cards; while we Service and Land fellows
act the decent sign for a blind pig--"
"Hullo, he's coming up," interrupted Brydges. "Seems your night for
deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know
Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing
like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know--he looks like a
peddler--has a pack horse--"
"Peddler o' th' Gospel, Son! Good eé-vening to you, Gentlemen."
The newcomer sang out greeting in a high thin falsetto that belied the
ruddy youth of shaven cheeks and accorded more with his masses of white
hair.
"Is this the Ranger place perched on top o' th' warld? Y'r workmen in
the white tent told me A'd find a short trail here-by t' th' next
Valley. 'Tis y'r Missionary Williams A'm seekin'; A thought if A'd
push on, push on, an' cat-er-corner y'r mountain here, A'd strike y'r
River by moonlight! So A have! So A have! But it's Satan's own waste
o' windfall 'mong these big trees! Such a leg-breakin' trail A have
na' beaten since A peddled Texas tickler done up in Gospel hymn books
filled wi' whiskey--"
"Well--I'll--be--hanged," slowly ejaculated Mr. Bat Brydges. "Come
far?" he asked aloud, fumbling his brain for a clue.
The old man, emerging from the timbers, took off his hat and swabbed
the sweat from his brow. Then he righted the saddle on his broncho.
"Eh, woman, do A scare y'?" This to Calamity, just turning down the
Ridge trail with a dun gray blanket filled with odds and ends on her
shoulders, when the padded thud of the pack horse coming through the
heavy timber was followed by the stalwart form of the newcomer. Face
and form were frontiersman; vesture, clerical; but Old Calamity trotted
back to the Range cabin.
"Come far, did y' ask? More or less, more or less. A've come farther
on unholier missions. We'd call it a nice bit snow-shoe run in the old
days. Two months since A left Saskatchewan! We've taken our time,
Bessie an' me--" caressing the mare with resounding slaps. "We're not
so young as we were, Bessie an' me, when we sarved Satan hot-foot back
an' forth these same trails till by the Grace o' God we broke halter
from Hell for holier trail--"
"Better loosen up and berth here for to-night," suggested the Ranger.
"The Ridge trail is steep going, down grade, after dark for a
stranger--"
"Stranger?" The old man trumpeted a laugh that would have done credit
to a megaphone. "Stranger, my kiddie boy? A've known these Rocky
Mountain States when, if ye owned these pairts an' had a homestead in
Hell, y'd rent y'r residence here and take up quiet life the other
place! A knew these trails before y' were born, from Mexico to
MacKenzie River, wherever men had a thirst. A've travelled these
trails wi' cook stoves packed full o' Scotch dew, an' the Mounted
Police hangin' t' m' tail till A scuttled the Boundary. Good days--rip
roaring days for the makin' of strong men! We were none o' y'r cold
blooded reptile calculatin' kind! May we fight valiant for God now as
we wrestled for the Devil then! Oh, to be young again an' not spill
life in wassail! to give the blows for right instead of wrong! Man,
what a view y' have here--what a view! Minds me of the days A was
bridge building in the Rockies--"
"Then you've been in these mountains before?" asked Brydges; but the
old frontiersman refused to take the bait and rambled on in his reverie.
"What a view! Th' vera kingdom of earth at y'r feet! The river
wimplin'--wimplin'--wimplin' wi' a silver laugh over the stones, an'
the light violet as a Scotch lass's eye! An' the green fields of
alfalfa--Have y' ever noticed how th' light above the alfalfa turns
purple? An' y'r Rim Rocks roasted fire red by the heat. 'Tis the same
view A've gazed on many a time when A was young." He drew a deep sigh
of the longing that only the passing frontiersman knows. "'Tis like if
the Devil came tempting to-day, 't would be such a place as this!
Many's the time He came to us in them old days, lawless days! 'Tis
different to-day. He'd not bait men savage naked now. The kingdoms of
the earth, he'd offer--wealth an' success--wealth an' success--the
fetish o' sons o' men to-day. 'Twould not be simple cards for drink
y'd play! Bigger stakes--bigger stakes, boys! He'd bait men's souls
wi' bigger stakes! If I were young I'd take his bet an' play for the
biggest stakes outside o' Hell--"
"Hey? What is that?" queried Brydges; and he winked at Wayland. "We'd
been talking of a bunco game when you came up."
"Y' had, had you?" The old frontiersman measured Brydges through and
through. "Well, judging from y'r brass an' the up-and-coming kind of
it, A'm thinking y'r stakes would be pea-nuts under little shells!
'Tis bigger stakes I'd play for if I had m' life to live over--"
"What?" asked Wayland curiously.
Mr. Bat Brydges was revising his inventory of the old "duffer."
Wayland was laughing openly. The old man had become oblivious of both,
with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and
tense compression of the lips--
"The--fate--o'--this--land," he ripped out in hammer raps, "the fate of
this land, boys, with all time lookin' on since ever Time began! Y're
the fiery furnace of all the world's hopes and fears, of all earth's
people, of all poets' dreams; an' God only knows what a mess o' slag
y're turning out! Y'r muck rakers are belching y'r failures to the
four corners of earth! Justice perverted! Courts in fee to the
highest bidder! More murders--murders in this fresh new clean land
than all the stew pots o' filth the old nations have brewed in a
thousand years; and murders unpunished! Y'r Government--the great
world experiment--is it the wull o' the people, or the wull of a gilded
clique o' tricksters?"
The old man stretched out his hands above the Valley. "What are ye
doing with y'r freedom, the freedom that the children o' light prayed
for and fought for and died for? When there's one law for the rich and
another for the poor, when ye have to bribe y'r own self-elected rulers
to do y'r wull, where is y'r freedom different from the freedom in
France before the Revolution? Is it not written 'my house shall be for
all nations; but ye have made it a den of thieves?' Ye have what all
the nations of the earth have bled for, what prophets have prayed for,
and patriots died for; and all the world is looking on asking,
sneering, scoffing, saying ye pervert the Ark o' the Covenant of God,
saying lawlessness stalks under y'r banners, saying y' wrest the
judgment to the highest bidder, aye to the supreme fountain head o' y'r
courts! The fate o' this land, boys! Them's the stakes I'd play for,
if I had lusty blows to spare. I'd up--I'd up--I'd strip me naked of
every back-thought and expediency and self-interest and hold-back! I'd
hurl the lie--in the teeth--of a scoffing world--I'd show all nations
o' time that the people, the plain common good people, can keep the law
sound as the Ark o' the Covenant of God; and--and--I'd hurl y'r traitor
leaders--y'r Judas Iscariots huckstering the land's good for paltry
silver--I'd hurl y'r grafters an' y'r heelers an' y'r bosses an' y'r
strumpet justices, who sell a verdict like a harlot, I'd hurl them to
the bottom of Hell! An' may Hell be both deep and hot--old fashioned
extra for the pack of them!"
He shook his trembling fist at the vacuous air. "Fight--right--might!
I'd paint the words in letters o' blood till they awakened this land
like the fiery cross of old! I'd fight--fight--fight till they had to
kill every man o' my kind before I'd down! Before I'd see y'r law
outraged, y'r courts perverted, y'r justice bartered and hawked and
peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from
blackmailer to high judge--but A didna mean to break loose. Y'r fair
scene stirred m' blood; and A'm an old man; and A love the land. A was
born West. A'm none of y'r immigration boomsters who goes in a Pullman
car, then tells the world all about--Now, which way to y'r Missionary
Williams?"
Bat flushed; but he did not laugh. Oddly enough, he forgot the
feature-story. Wayland rose and came forward and involuntarily held
out his hand.
"I wish you'd stay for the night," he said. "A good many of us feel
the way you do; but like you, we're all up in air. Sawing the air
doesn't saw wood. A good many of us are in the fight right now; but,
unless we get somewhere, we're going to feel as if we were carving wind
mills. Suppose you put up here for the night? Besides, it's pretty
late to go down. Trail switches sharply--"
The old frontiersman heard absently.
"An old man's broodings," he ruminated.
"I'd call 'em D. T.'s," muttered Brydges.
"Don't fear for my bones on the trail." He came back from his reverie
as from a journey. "A'm the old breed that doesn't break. 'Tis you
young brittle fellows all bred to pace and speed and style needs look
to y'r goin's. Which way do A turn at the foot of the Ridge?
One--two--three--A see four lights. Which is the Mission?"
"If you insist on leaving, Sir, there is an Indian woman here going
down to the MacDonald ranch--"
"MacDonald, did you say?"
"The next place along the River is the Mission. Here, Calamity, show
this stranger which way to go, will you?"
But Calamity had already bolted for the Ridge trail.
"Stranger? She doesn't look to me exactly like a stranger. Looks
precious like one of our Saskatchewan half-breeds! Haven't A seen you
before, my good woman? A'm Jack Matthews, who carried the mail for the
Company at the Big House; by an' by contractor, then by the Grace o'
God missionary to the Cree! Haven't A seen you, girl? Was it '85 at
the Agency House when Wandering Spirit--"
"Non sabe," snapped Calamity, setting off down the trail at a run paced
to keep the reverend traveller behind till she reached the last loop.
Drawing her shawl over her face, she paused with her back to the
frontiersman. To the left blinked the lights of the sheep ranch house
and the Mission, to the right the cow-boy camp and the dead glare of
the white buildings belonging to the Senator.
"Viola! dat vay!" The woman deliberately pointed to the cow-boy camp;
then vanished in the darkness.
"Mighty quick wench! A have seen you before, my sly minx, and A'll see
you some more," he said staring after the fading form.
Then he headed his mare for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a
dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out
the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle
of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the
necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on
the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, an old white pack
horse nosing windward of the smoke; one figure with sheepskin chaps to
his waist, thumbs in his belt, standing erect with back to the trail;
and face in light, a shaven face with a strong jaw and oily geniality,
a corpulent form in a white vest, putting a pocket book in a breast
pocket.
The old frontiersman took hold of his mare's bridle.
"'Tis hardly what you'd look for in a Missionary outfit, Bessie."
"You'll leave for the South at once?"
The question commanded. The old frontiersman listened.
"Hoof express, Sir," promised the sheep-skin leggings.
"And mind you I know nothing about it, Jim. I'm not to be told. I
take care of you without you knowing about it. I _expect you_ to take
care of us--" the white waist coat became at once impressive and
anxious.
"That's all right, Colonel. I understand! We'll crowd 'em to beat
Hell; and they'll go it blind. If it's coming dark, they'll shut their
eyes and go over blind. I defy Sheriff Flood, himself, if he's
standing on the spot to make a case--"
"You need have no fear of Sheriff Flood _ever_ being on the spot.
He'll be busy under his bed that night; but look out for these Federal
puppy-boy Forest Ranger fellows! Finish up off the confounded National
Range. Finish up before they reach the National Range."
"And the Mexican herders?" asked the sheep skin chaps with a flourish
of his band above the fire that showed the flash of a diamond on the
little finger.
The white vest spread deprecating hands.
"That's your business, Jim! Make a clean sweep of the herd; but see
that no harm comes to the boy."
The old frontiersman headed his broncho silently back on the trail.
"Night birds hatching snake eggs. A'm really between two minds to go
back and crack their addled heads."