CHAPTER XVII

WHERE THE TRACKS ALL POINT ONE WAY

Wayland poured the last very driblets of water sediments from the skin

bag. This, he forced past the old man's lips. Then he drew the

unconscious form back on the saddle blankets, loosened the neck of the

shirt, laved the temples and wrists with the salt water, tore strips of

canvas from the tent square, wet that and laid it on the old man's

forehead. He ran his hand inside the shirt and felt the heart. It was

still beating, beating furiously, with faint flutterings, then

accessions of fresh fury. The lips were black and swollen. The eyes

were sunken; and the veins stood out in deadly clear purplish

reticulation with splotches of transfused blood under the shrivelled

skin of the hands. Then, he raised the old white head from the pack

trees,--brave old warrior for right going down the Trail where the

Tracks All Point One Way--, and somehow got a mouthful of brandy past

the clinched teeth. The breath came fast and faint like the heart

beats. Once, the eyes opened; but they were glazed and unseeing.

Wayland laid the old head on the pillowed pack trees, fitting rest for

frontiersman of the wilderness; then he stood up to think! A terrible

passion of tenderness, of question, of defiance to God, rushed through

his thoughts. The animals take their tragedies dumb and uncomplaining.

Man alone has not learned the futility of shouting impotent reproaches

at a brazen sky.

The Ranger unsaddled the pony. Then he tethered the mule and broncho

by separate ropes to the boulders. He placed the brandy flask by the

old man's right hand. He thought a moment. Then he laid the loaded

rifle close to the same hand.

The eyes were still staring wide open unseeing. The purple lips began

babbling wordless words, words of the sea, words that ran into one

another inarticulate. Wayland stooped and took the left hand in his

own palm. It was cold and heavy, a thing detached from life; and the

purple swollen lips were still babbling in inarticulate whispers.

Should he leave him to die there alone; or go forth to seek; seek what?

The Ranger stooped and pressed his lips to the blood-blotched back of

the faithful shrivelled old hand. He did not shed a tear. We weep

only when we are half hurt.

Wayland seized the Service axe and uncased his own rifle. Then in

words that were not worshipful, not bending his knees, but standing

with his hat off, he uttered what may have been a prayer, or may have

been blasphemy. I leave you to judge: "By God, if there is a God, why

doesn't He waken up? If there is a God, does _He_ stand for right? Is

there such a thing as Right; or is Right the dream of fools? I want to

know! If there is a God, I want God to speak out clear and plain,

right now, in plain facts, so I can understand, and not so blamed long

ago that a plain fellow can't make out what's the right thing to do."

It was one thing to pray under the rose-colored windows of a college

chapel, and another thing to pray under the yellow, brazen Desert sky.

There was only the dreadful Desert silence, with the rattle from the

laboured breathing of the unconscious man. If there was no God, then

the fight for Right was the futility of fools: Right was only the Right

of the strong to prey upon the weak, till the weak became in turn

strong enough to prey; and that meant anarchy. If Right was right as

two and two make four in Heaven or Hell, then _where_ was the God from

whom Right, laws of Right emanated, guiding the unwise as laws of

gravity guide the stars?

He didn't know that he had been staggering from physical weakness as he

climbed the ridge of sand. There was the fresh horse. _One of them_

might escape in a night by riding it to death. Then, there was the

possibility of the railroad being within reach. One of them might go

out to the railroad, _but not both_. The old frontiersman had passed

the point of being able to ride; and a very few hours would probably

witness the end of his life. He could tie the old man to the fresh

horse, but the slow pace that would be necessary would sacrifice both

their lives. There was another possibility: the fresh man on the fresh

horse. That way out did not enter Wayland's mind; but he did ask

himself _why_ the outlaws had not come down to the false pool. Why had

they gone on? They were as near the end of their tether as he was of

his.

Then he became suddenly conscious that he had eaten almost nothing for

twenty-four hours and that the quivering air darkening to night rolled

above the yellow sands in a way not caused by heat. Was it saddle wear

or exhaustion that he stumbled as he walked? He looked at the silver

strip of mountains above the westering sky. A fore-shortening haze

swam into his sight. There was the mountain flecked with silver. Then

it had gone into a milky black and pools, pools of water, fringed by

the pines of the North, hung in the blue haze of mid-air,

fore-shortening, shifting like a blurred sieve into the silver strip of

mountain and milky blot, then back again, pools of crystal water, cool

mountain lakes, this time with the trees up side down and figures among

the trees. He knew by the trees being up side down, though he was

dreaming of laughing as he drank and drank, that it must be a mirage!

Then he came to himself wondering how in the world he was sitting on

the sand bank. And why hadn't he kept the tea leaves to put on his

eyes in case of heat inflammation? Then, it tripped almost under his

feet, you understand _he_ did not trip, he had struck at it with his

Service axe--the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws'

trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt

sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in

serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the

break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against

the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes.

Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep to

dream her face framed in the blur of the purpling haze, receding from

him, drawing him with the shine of the stars in her eyes, drawing him

with the warmth of their first passion kiss on her lips? He would rise

from his grave, and follow her from death, if she wove such spells,

whether of dreams or delirium or mirage! The Ranger found himself

stumbling across the baked silt and lava rocks, stripped of his hat and

his boots, stripped like a marathon runner, vaguely conscious that he

ought to have kept those tea leaves for that burn in his eyes, that the

silver strip of the mountain was there just ahead; now a crystal pool

of the cool mountain lake in mid air; now her face had vanished into

the blue haze. Suddenly, winged things flappered up with raucous

protest. The coyote had skulked over the edge of the lava dip; not the

burnt-oil earth-scorched Desert smell, but the shrivelled putridity of

flesh smote and nauseated his senses. The white pack horse of the

outlaw drovers lay dead across the trail at his feet, a pool of clotted

blood darkening the ashy sand. Its throat had been cut. . . .

The Ranger drew off, rubbed his eyes and looked again. The crumbly

silt had been trampled all round the dead horse. So they, too, were

dying of thirst on the Desert. Which way to follow now? There were

the hoof prints across the open level; but forking from the main trail

was another track: that of a man dragged or dragging or crawling

forward on his hands and knees. Had they deserted the third man; or

had the third man dropped back from them to cut his horse's throat?

The Ranger laughed aloud, a harsh cracked laugh; he knew he was

delirious. The Lord had played an ace and he wouldn't trump His trick

by going after the trail of the man who had crawled away to die. There

was a Deity of retribution at least, whether God or demon: he had vowed

he would make those blackguards drink horse blood!

If he hounded along the trail, perhaps he might overhaul the other two.

Then, then if he did perish in the Desert, he would not have perished

for naught! It was then, the earth performed the acrobatic feat of

heaving up, and he fell! This time, he knew he had fallen. It was no

trip. He was down and out and done for; and he knew it. He rose to

his knees steadying himself on his Service axe. Then, it came again,

the silver strip of mountain on the sky line with the cool lakes and

the blue haze, and her face, the face in the Watts' picture of "the

Happy Warrior," weaving the spell, receding from him, drawing him with

the love light in her eyes and the passion kiss on her lips, beckoning,

beckoning; he would rise and follow her from the dead if she beckoned

with that light in her eyes. She was receding _not_ along the trail of

the fleeing Desert runners, but down the dragged track of the body that

had crawled to the foot of a sand bank. Wayland never knew whether he

staggered or crept down the trail of the dragged body away from the

hoof prints of the drovers' horses across the alkali sink; but between

him and the silver strip of mountain on the far skyline, above the

yellow sand so hot to his palms, beckoned her face, the love light in

her eyes, weaving the spell. Then the coyote had bounded into the air,

and the red-combed Desert condors, the scavengers of an outcast world,

rose from their quarry; and Wayland, fevered, delirious, laughing,

crying, kneeled over the body of a man lying on his face with his

bloody hand clutched in death grip round an upright post driven into

the alkali bottoms, a post with a drinking cup hung on the notched

crotch, the Desert sign of a water spring beneath the drifted sands.

Wayland pushed the body aside. The man's face was red-smeared. He was

dead. Wayland had to unlock the clutched fingers from the post.

Somewhere, from the submerged consciousness of forgotten college lore

came memory that the water table lay ten feet deep beneath the Desert

silt. The Ranger slid down the sand drift and was chopping, hacking,

digging, into the side of the bank, thanking God; God _was_ on the job

after all; scooping the sand drift out with his naked hand, burrowing

at the earth as the animals of the wilderness-struggle tear in maddened

thirst for the hidden life beneath the sand death. He heard the suck

and gurgle of the water, not the joyous silver laugh of Northern

springs, but the sullen coming of water compelled; and his lips were at

the sand; drinking, drinking, drinking. Then, he suddenly remembered

her face. He looked up. Gone the silver strip of shining mountain;

gone the mirage of the crystal pool; darkness, velvet pansy darkness of

the Desert night; and an earth bat winged past his face. Even as he

drank he felt the puff and whirl of the wind rising; he laughed. He

felt the cool water trickle and settle and pool in the sand hole. Then

he laved his temples and wrists, and laughed softly, and called a low

long tremulous call; that foolish Saxon word he had told her to look up

in the dictionary.

The wind might blow great guns, and wipe out the fugitive trail. He

would go no farther. The wind would attend to the other two men. He

had found water: he had found life. God had played the trick; and he

had not trumped the ace; four of the six outlaws dead, and the last two

hastening to the alkali death across the Desert sands. He drank again,

this time from the cup, sip by sip, slowly, then in deep draughts of

God-given waters.

He didn't thank God in so many words, or in testimony to pass muster at

a prayer meeting; but he paused twice on his way back to the saline

sink to say: "He's on the job. You bet He's on the job!" He spent the

rest of the week nursing the old frontiersman back to life.

PART II

THE MAN HIGHER UP

CHAPTER XVIII

WITHOUT MALICE

The Senator sat in his office with his hat on the back of his head and

a U. S. Geological Survey map spread out on the desk in front of him.

Bat stood sleepily at attention on the other side of the desk with his

hat in his hand. It was a sweltering July afternoon in Smelter City,

the air athrob with the derricks and the trucks and the cranes and the

pulleys and the steam hoists and the cable car tramway run up and down

the face of Coal Hill by natural gravitation. The light was dusky

yellow from the smelter smoke; and loafers round the transcontinental

railroad station across the street chose the shady side of the

building, where they sat swinging their legs from the platform and

aiming tobacco juice with regularity and precision in the exact centre

of the gray dusty road.

The Senator wore a pair of pince nez glasses. He looked up over the

top of them through the yellow sun-light of the open street door.

"Declare, Brydges, the damned rascals are too lazy to brush the flies

off," he observed of the brigade of loafers across the street.

Bat threw a glance over his shoulder at the coterie of loafers, and

brought his drowsy tortoise-shell glance back to the map lying before

the Senator.

"I guess the flies won't bother 'em long as they vote right, Mr.

Senator."

Moyese was slowly turning and turning the thick stub of a crayon pencil

between his thumb and fore finger. Bat knew that trick of

absent-minded motion always presaged senatorial sermonizing, just as

the soft laugh down in the crinkles of the white vest forewarned

danger. ("When I see the tummy wrinkles coming, I always feel like

telling the other fellow to get the button off his fencing sword--You

bet _that_ means business," Bat often confided to the newseditor.)

"Brydges, this country is rapidly lining up two opposing sides:

fighting lines, too, by George! Mobocracy _versus_ Plutocracy! I'm

only a cog in the wheel, myself, a mere marker for the big counters, my

boy; but if I have to put up with the tyranny of one or t'other, I'm

damned if I don't prefer the tyranny of the rich to the tyranny of the

poor, any day! _Why_, is any man poor in this country, Brydges?

Because he's a damned incompetent unfit swinish hog, too lazy to plant

and hoe his own row; so he gets the husks of the corn while the

competent man gets the cob--the cob with the corn on, you bet, number

one, Silver King, Hard, seventy cents a bushel! If I have to put up

with one or t'other, I'm damned if I don't prefer the tyranny of

knowledge to the tyranny of ignorance! One butters your bread, anyway,

and sometimes puts some jam on with the butter. The other snivels and

whines and begs a crust from the other fellow's table, and snaps at the

hand that gives him the crust, and spends the time in self-pity that he

should spend in work! Look at that row of free-born American citizens,

kings in disguise, Brydges! Not a damned man of them ever did a stroke

of honest work in his life except on election day, when we line 'em up;

and damn it, aren't we right, to line 'em up? What kind of rule are

you going to get from that kind of rulership if some one doesn't jump

in and group it and direct it; yes, by George, and _compel_ it to keep

in line and vote right, just as a general licks his recruits in shape

on pain of court martial? Think any battle would ever be won, Brydges,

if the commanding officer hadn't the power of a despot? He makes

mistakes. Of course, he makes mistakes! So do we! But we're keeping

those damned rascals in line for the good of the country; and so, I

say, the plutocrats who are being cursed from one end of the country to

the other to-day, are playing the same part in modern life as the big

war chiefs of the Middle Ages. They are marshalling the forces;

leading the advance; conquering the countries with commerce that the

old war chiefs used to conquer with arms; building up, constructing,

amassing, concentrating in trust and combine all the scattered

abilities of men, who would be powerless individually; and we use our

tools, that parcel of beauties out there, same as the old war chiefs

used their blackguard mercenaries! It's cheaper for us to buy 'em than

be bossed by 'em, a darn sight cheaper, Brydges; for us to swing 'em

into a bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If

every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every damned little

squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman,

if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen

of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up

for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that

gang across the way on voting day!

"Freedom, pah!" The Senator had stopped swirling the stub pencil. He

reached forward to a jar of roses on his desk. "Equality? Pah! Dream

of fools, Brydges! Doesn't exist! Never did exist! Never can exist!

Know how we develop Silver King Corn that gives ninety bushels to the

acre instead of old thirty bushel yield?"

Bat had sat down, still sleepily watchful through the tortoise-shell

eyes, but a bit wilted in the heat. Some of the men swinging corduroy

and blue jean legs from the station platform evidently perpetrated a

pleasantry; for there was a loud guffaw, and a shower of tobacco wads

into the middle of the road.

"Know how we get high grade corn, high grade rose like this American

Beauty: in fact, high grade anything? Well, I'll tell you. It's the

same process that brings out high grade men. You go into a field of

corn. You pick out best specimens. You keep that for seed, special

care, special fine ground, special careful cultivation. You let the

others go, feed 'em to the hogs, understand, Bat? It's the same with

the roses, and the same with men; and now where's your fine theory of

all men equal?"

As Bat did not care to remind the Senator that his own career from the

ghetto up contradicted all this fine philosophy, he left the question

unanswered.

Moyese pushed the glasses up on his nose and returned to the map.

"How many homesteaders did you succeed in nabbing out of that last

train-load?"

"About a hundred, Senator! I've got the list of 'em here . . . haven't

counted, but think it will tally up about a hundred."

"What are they, Germans?"

"No, Swedes."

Moyese laughed. "Thrifty beggars will job round and earn double while

they're operating for us! Got good big families, Bat?"

It was the turn of the handy man to laugh. "I filed one fellow and

eight kids for one hundred and sixty acres each."

"You didn't contract to pay each of the little olive branches

three-hundred?"

"Lord, no! If the dad sits tight till we prove up entry, he's to get

three-hundred! No fear of his blabbing. He can't speak a word of

English; and when I told the woman, through the interpreter that we pay

their fare out and each of the kids would get a five, why, she kissed

my hand and slobbered gratitude all over me."

"Wayland won't be quite so grateful for that bunch."

"Oh, I didn't file that batch in the N. F. You bet, that's a little

too obvious! I put 'em in the Pass, lower end of the Pass, not by a

damn sight, I didn't put 'em in the N. F.! I thought Smelter people

wanted us to secure that Pass for a dam; and I bunched 'em all in just

above the Sheriff's place!"

"That's good! The Sheriff proves up this year; and if you get this

bunch in behind, that corks the Pass up pretty effectually! Where are

the bounds of the Forest there?"

Bat drew his fore-finger along the map. "Along the red line, here:

just to the trail through the canyon."

"Good: now what about the timber claim along the Gully? That's in the

Forests, Brydges. I want to force a contest on that; the Swede fellow

has cut the logs under his permit; but I'd like to make that doubly

sure before we go to trial. If we can get a double cinch on that,

we'll knock the claim of the Forestry Department to keep homesteaders

out into a cocked hat."

Bat's sleepy eyes emitted sparks and his good natured smile widened to

an open grin.

"The Swede happened to use a U. S. Forest hatchet when he cut those

logs," he said. "I told him to be sure and stamp the butt end of each

log U. S., duly inspected," he said.

Moyese dropped the map and the pencil and his heavy hand with a thud on

the desk and laughed noiselessly down into the creases of his fat

double chin and into the wrinkling rotundity of his white vest.

"And to cinch it," continued Brydges, "as the fellow's permit didn't

cover the Gully, I got some blanket railway scrip for an Irishman,

O'Finnigan, Shanty Town, and planked it on the Gully. You see,

Senator, by law the settlers _can_ go in on the National Forests

wherever it has been surveyed and declared agricultural land; but they

can't go in and get title till it is surveyed and passed. But you can

plaster the railway scrip _where it is unsurveyed_. That's the little

joker somebody tucked in when the scrip railway act was passed. I

guess by the time they have red-taped and trapesed round and wrangled

those two tangles of title out, the logs will be safe down the River;

and I guess that will about see the finish of Wayland before the coal

cases come up--"

"That's it, Brydges." Moyese had lowered his voice. "What about

Wayland? Have you found out anything? Where the devil is he? He

isn't on his patrol! He hasn't been at the Ridge for three weeks. He

hasn't been at the Ridge since I left for Washington. If we could

prove how he's been using Government time," he paused to reflect.

"_That_ might be shortest way out! Did you find out anything at the

MacDonald Ranch?"

Bat threw a precautionary glance over his shoulder towards the door

opening on the street. Then he rose, walked across the office, shut

the door, came back and drawing his chair close to the desk opposite

the Senator, sat down astride with his feet tucked back one round each

hind leg.

"Yes, I did; and no again, I didn't! It's just as it may strike you!

As a news man, I know _how_ this kind of yarn would be taken by the

public."

"Oh, come on with it, Brydges!" Moyese had pushed back and was holding

the edge of the desk with his hands. Mr. Bat Brydges recognized that

while the creases of good-nature crinkled at the chin, the jaws and the

hands had locked.

"Your newsman got this despatch from Mine City: you see it's pretty

vague: 'bodies of two men found forty miles from branch of P. & O.

Line, thought to be drovers overcome by heat and thirst.' I wired for

more particulars; but the railway hands had shovelled the bodies under."

"Brydges," interrupted Moyese sharply, "I'm going to tell you

something; and you put it in your pipe and smoke it; and don't waste

time running off on false clues. You leave that to women and

sissies--to the she-male man! Now listen, _a man can't lose himself in

the Desert: He can't lose himself in the Wilderness_. If he's a

damphool, he can get lost, but he can't lose himself, he can't hide in

the wilderness, not ever! He can lose himself in a city in one week.

He could drop out of sight right here in Smelter City; but he can't go

into the wilds and not come out again and people not know it. Somebody

sees him go in, and somebody doesn't see him come out; and there you

are! It's the same in the wilds as at the North Pole: you can't cook

up a fake. Man who goes into the wilds is a marked man till he comes

out. Every man, who meets him, takes a turn round to look at him; and

he's going to keep looking till the fellow comes out. Now, you take

this case. Wayland had on his Service Badge. If he had been one of

those two, the fact would have been flashed right down to Washington.

Now tell me facts, not rumors; exactly what did you find out?"

When his chief began in that dictatorial fashion, Bat let his facts go

in a running fire:

"Well, Flood saw him with his own eyes going up the Pass with that old

Canadian duffer the morning, the morning," Bat paused, manifestly

unable to specify which morning.

"Yes, the morning _after_," added the soft, even voice of Moyese. "And

the snow slide filled the Pass up to the neck, forty-eight hours later.

Yes, I know; but Wayland was too good a mountain man to be caught by a

slide."

"I told Flood to get out and examine that slide, anyway! He said

'twasn't any use, this hot weather would clean it up in a couple of

weeks. He was going up the Pass when I left for the Valley yesterday."

"What did you find out at the Ridge?"

"That's where the milk is in this cocoanut," answered Bat. "He hasn't

passed one night _at_ the Ridge since the night we were all up! You

remember _who_ was at the Cabin, night we went up? Well, keep that in

mind; when I went across to MacDonald's Ranch to express your regret

over this accident, found old man wasn't home. He's expected back from

the Upper Pass by train this week: seems he has been arranging new

grazing ground for another herd up there. You know how MacDonald house

is laid out? Big room as you enter; then a sort of back sitting room

for," Bat smiled queerly, a smile that said nothing, yet

subterraneously conveyed out to daylight one of those under currents of

thought that flows only in the dark, "for the lady. Well, sir, chill

blasts of North Pole were tropical zephyrs compared to what I got from

that MacDonald gurl."

"I thought her name was Miss MacDonald," suggested the Senator, softly.

He had lowered his chin and was looking over his eye glasses at Brydges.

"Hold on, Mr. Senator! I am coming to that! Her father has been away

a month. I found out from Calamity and the road gang that Wayland

hasn't been at the Cabin since that night I was there; and Gee

Whittiker," Brydges laughed sleepily, the same smile that said nothing

but came up from the subterranean under current, "he _was_ a bear with

a sore head that night; spent most of the night prancing the Ridge.

Well, a fellow can't exactly stand on one leg and then on t'other all

through a call. She didn't ask me to sit down. Said her father was

coming home by Smelter City and you could have the pleasure of

conveying your sympathy personally: kept standing herself all the time;

kept looking from me to the door. Well, sir, while she was looking

_through_ the door behind me, I was looking _through_ the door behind

her." And as Bat said it, he looked away. "Wayland's Range coat was

hanging in that inner room."

Bat smiled slowly and sleepily; then openly grinned as who should say

"now the cat _is_ out"; but when he turned to Moyese, his chief had

whirled in the swing chair and was sitting with hands clasped under his

hat, and the back of his head towards Brydges.

A glossy smile had come over Bat's face that is not good to see on man,

woman, child or beast; and it is the same kind of smile on all four,

not laughter, nor light, not definite enough to be malicious, nor

pointed enough to be self accusatory, nor direct enough to be

challenged and repudiated; a smile untellably familiar--a Satyr-faced

thought looking through a veil, somehow sinuously suggestive, saying

nothing at all, yet conveying the physical sensation of pus from an

ulcerous thing; and strangely enough, there are blow-fly natures that

prefer pus to nectar.

If Brydges had not been so absorbed in the jocularity of his own

sensations, he would have observed that his chief remained singularly

silent.

"Oh, I don't suppose he's there all this time." Bat rushed to the

defence of the absent, (Heaven bless such defenders). "That old

Canadian duffer, who seems to have hitched up with him on the Rim Rocks

accident, your ranch foreman saw 'em pass together at noon; tried to

telephone 'Herald,' but I choked _that_ off; that old fellow once wrote

our paper to know about Canadian settlers here. He recognized Calamity

and talked about old North West Rebellion days. It's my theory he's

here about something that's been hushed up! Like dad, like daughter,"

Bat pronounced.

"It's my theory when MacDonald comes back from the Upper Pass, Wayland

and the old fellow will turn up about the same time. Haven't been able

to learn what it is; but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts, they are all

absent on the same trail. If we let go a broadside, they'll have to

come out with the truth to shut us off; and there is where we are going

to get him; see? I've got another theory, too."

"What's that?" asked the Senator, without turning.

"It is, if he sees we're going to involve her, he'll quit."

Moyese didn't answer. He rose from his chair and walked to a rear

window, where he stood looking out. Did he credit what he had heard?

Was it a recital of facts, or a distortion of facts through a tainted

mind? Did Brydges, himself, believe what he had tried to convey? Or

was his job to obtain certain results at any cost: and was this part of

the cost? Ask yourself that of the tainted news you read every day.

Ask why those who recognize the lie do not brand it as such; why those

who are uncertain do not verify before they repeat and credit; and you

will probably have some clue to the little melodrama of dishonor

enacted in the office of a legal luminary at Smelter City that

sweltering hot July day. When you come to observe it, Bat's recital

contained nothing that might not have been posted in eminent

respectability on a church warden's door. Like fresh fruit passed

through a mouldy cellar, the facts came from the medium of the narrator

with the unclean contagion of cellar mould. The next narrator would

not pass on the facts. He would pass on the cellar rot.

"If we served up those two stories together hot," emphasized Bat, "we'd

about cut the throat of any opposition to our interests in the Valley?

He'd quit! I'll bet before he'd see her involved, he'd jump his job!"

When the Senator turned his face to the handy man, he was very sober.

He stood looking over the tops of his glasses boring into Bat's face.

"It's a pity," he said.

"Yes, it's too bad: one hates to have one's faith in human nature all

balled out this way; but you never know what kind of a fact you're

going ping up against where a woman is concerned." Something in the

Senator's look stopped Bat mid-way.

"Brydges, I thought I told you never to meddle with the damphool who

makes excuses for what he's going to do. Never do anything, unless you

have some end worth while in view; then, if it's worth while, do it,

damn it, and don't waste time excusing the means! Now, I'll have

nothing to do with this; mind that, Brydges. You do it off your own

responsibility. If MacDonald were one of our party, I wouldn't make

use of it, if it were ten times over and over true. You'll have to be

very careful how you use that, at all! It's effective. I don't deny

it's very effective; but it's a pity! If you use that at all, you'll

have to use it so it's not libelous."

"Libelous?" burst out the handy man wakening up suddenly, scratching

his tousled head and trying to make head or tail of orders that said

'do it' and 'don't do it' in one breath. "I can write it without a

name so every man in the State will know who it is: give it as a joke;

fetch in Calamity as the mother of the whole mess; the call of the

blood, you know; reversion to type! They'll have to prove that the

intent was malice before they can get a judgment. They'll have to come

out with the truth before they can prove libel. It isn't libelous if

it's done as a joke without malice."

Moyese had flung himself down in his chair with a blow of his clenched

fist on the desk, when the opening of the office door stopped the oath

of disgust on his lips; and Eleanor MacDonald stood framed in the

yellow light shining in from the hot street. For a moment, the

transition from sun to shade blinded her. Then, she saw who was with

the Senator. Brydges sprang up waiting to return her recognition. She

made no sign. She walked over where he was standing. The Senator had

half risen from his desk. Was it the spirit of the ancestral Indian in

her eyes; or of the Man with the Iron Hand? Brydges' oily gloss went

to tallow under her look. Moyese knew looks that drilled; and Brydges

himself could bore behind for motives; but this look was not a drill:

it was a Search Light; and the handy man--well, perhaps, it was the

heat--the handy man suddenly wilted.

"You can go, Brydges," ordered Moyese.

"All right! See you again about that, Senator!" Brydges grabbed up

the loose notes from the desk and bolted, banging the door behind him.

The Senator's face seemed at once to age and trench with lines. He

motioned her to the vacated chair and remained bending forward over his

desk till she had seated herself. Then, he sat down, suddenly

remembered his hat, and laid it off. If she had sunk forward on the

desk weeping; if she had made a sign of appeal; he would have gone

round and caressed her and petted her and told her she must _stop_

Wayland. His whole manhood went out to comfort her, to stand between

her and what? . . . Was it the drive of those wheels of which he was a

cog? But when she looked across the desk, the eyes had no appeal, the

Search Light had turned on him.

"You must excuse me if you heard what I was saying, when you came in,

Miss Eleanor; but it was a G-- doggon lie! I had been angered: I had

been angered very much; and that's a bad thing on a hot day." He was

slipping back to the usual suavity.

CHAPTER XIX

BALLOTS FOR BULLETS

It was Calamity, who had carried the trouble-making coat across from

the Mission Library to the MacDonald Ranch House. Eleanor had found it

in the big living room that day after she had read the note saying he

was setting out "on the Long Trail, the trail this Nation will have to

follow before Democracy arrives; the trail of the Man behind the

Thing." Somehow, she lost interest in her reading and her driving, and

spent the most of that first week after the funeral in the steamer

chair on the Ranch House piazza. Were the topaz gates of the sunset

still ajar to a new infinite life; or did satyr faces haunt the shadows

of the trail, satyr faces of the Greed that had plotted the bloody

villainy of the Rim Rocks? She had thought she knew joy before, joy

that rapt her from life in a race reverie. Now, she knew joy, tense as

pain; and the consciousness never left her. It was there; beside,

inside, above, all round, an enveloping atmosphere to everything she

thought and said and did. She could not read; for while her eyes

passed _over_ the lines, that consciousness danced in flames _between_

the lines. She tried to forget herself in her work--in the sorting of

the littered shelves, in the mending for the ranch hands absent with

her father in the Upper Pass; but It was there just the same, at her

elbow; in behind the commonplace weaving rainbow mists, a shadowy deity

of thought all pervasive as ether. Before, she had been as one

standing in front of the up-lifted veil. Now, she knew she had passed

in behind the veil, and could not if she would come out to the former

place. Life symbols empty of meaning before, suddenly became

allegorical of eternity--the bridal veil, the orange wreaths, the ring

typical of the infinite, the vows of service, the angel of the drawn

sword on the back trail. Yet she knew she had promised to keep him

resolute, standing strong to his work, unflinching because of her.

It was, perhaps, typical of those ancestral traits that fear for him

never once entered her thoughts. His work was on the firing line; and

had she not _once_ said that a life more or less did not matter? That

was before his life had become her life. That is, fear for him did not

enter her waking thoughts. It was different when she slept. Then the

uncurbed thoughts hovered like the face in the picture of "the Sleeping

Warrior." One night as she sat in the steamer chair, a cold wind came

down from the Pass. The cook explained it was because of the snow

slide that had filled up the canyon.

"Calamity," she called, "bring me out something to put round my

shoulders; don't bring a shawl: I hate shawls!"

And Calamity, perfectly naturally, brought out Wayland's coat. Eleanor

did not laugh; for she knew it was only since Calamity had stopped

roving the Black Hills that she had exchanged male attire for the

Indian woman's insignia of good conduct, a shawl. She waited till

Calamity had pattered down to the basement. Then, she slipped into the

coat with a queer little laugh that would have played havoc with

Wayland's resolutions, and running her hands up the long dangling

sleeve ends, lay back to a reverie that could hardly be called thought.

It was consciousness, delirious foolish consciousness, possible only to

youth; and the consciousness slipped into a drowse between sleeping and

waking. It was--where was it? In the shadow realms of wonderful dream

consciousness, his face, the face in "the Happy Warrior"; but not her

face: instead was the evil fellow seen that night in the storm on the

Rim Rocks clubbing his gun at Fordie's pinto pony through the mists;

only he wasn't clubbing it at Fordie; he was aiming at Wayland; and

there was the white horse. She wakened herself with her cry. That

happened to be the night Wayland had camped in the Desert arroyos.

One afternoon, Sheriff Flood had called to know if her father had come

back and what "he intended to do about it." Incidentally, he mentioned

that the Forest Ranger had gone through the Pass that led to the

Desert: there had been a snow slide; but he "guessed" the Ranger was

"too cute a mountain man to be caught." That night, she shivered as

she sat in the steamer chair; and she drew Wayland's coat around her;

but it was not to delirious thoughts. When she fell asleep, she saw

him lying on his face in the Desert; and she called him, and called

him, and never could reach him, and awakened herself with her own

calling. Wayland's professional friend, who was a psychologist,

explained both incidents as auto suggestion from the coat awakened by

the uneasiness of the unconscious fears; an explanation that explains

by saying x is y.

At all events, she never again used the coat; and having nothing to

conceal, didn't conceal it, which is the most damning evidence you can

offer to a tortuous mind. She hung the coat in the apartment off the

big living room. Then, the despatch came out about the two bodies

found in the Desert. The same mail brought a letter from her father

asking her to meet him at Smelter City; and there at the Ranch House

gate stood Mr. Bat Brydges, handy man of the Valley, quizzing the ranch

hands, quizzing the German cook, quizzing Calamity at the very foot of

rustic slab steps that ran up from the basement.

"What is he after, Calamity?"

The half breed woman had dashed up the back stairs to Eleanor's room.

"He want t' know if Waylan--Ranga fellah--has ever stay here, dis

house--he ever go back Cabin House--tepee on hill--night dey keel

leetle boy?"

Even then, Eleanor did not realize the drift of the handy man's

activities. She thought perhaps, he, too, might be anxious about

Wayland.

"What did you tell him, Calamity?"

"I tell heem," Calamity dropped her soft patois to a guttural, "I tell

heem, y' go Hell!"

"Ca-lam-ity?" rebuked Eleanor.

But what was it in the gentleman's jaunty air, in the smile of the

sleepy tortoise-shell eyes, in the play of a self-conscious dimple

round the fat double chin? Eleanor had not passed from her own

apartment to the big living room before a repulsion that she could not

define swept over her in a physical shudder; and Mr. Bat Brydges'

report to the Senator of that interview had been fairly accurate. She

did not know that she had not greeted him with the common courtesy due

a caller, that she had stood looking past him to the open door, that

she had left him standing first on one leg then on the other till Bat

had been forced to terminate the interview; and she had not the

faintest conception of what her own feeling of repulsion meant. He had

scarcely gone before she wished she had asked him about those two

bodies found in the Desert. As a matter of fact, she called up the

"Smelter City Independent." The editor could give her no details. He

asked her very particularly who was inquiring; and having nothing to

conceal, she did not conceal it. He allayed her fears in almost the

words that the Senator had used to lay Bat's suspicions, if the bodies

had been those of Government men, the Ranger's Badge would have been

found and the news flashed all over America.

"Oh, thank you, so much! You know the sheep lost on the Rim Rocks

belonged to our ranch; and I wouldn't like to think that he had lost

his life defending our interests."

Then something odd occurred with the telephone. She distinctly heard

the voice at the other end telling somebody that, "Brydges was up there

now." Then, the voice was assuring her, "They would let her know if

they heard anything more."

Eleanor rang off with a sense of relief; and yet with a sickening

feeling, of what? It was the same feeling she had had when Brydges

came in with his jaunty air.

She was standing at the Ranch House gate waiting for the stage to

Smelter City. Calamity had carried down the yellow suit case. The

words came from Eleanor's lips before she thought; or she could never

have asked the question:

"Calamity, who was it took your little baby away?"

The suit case fell from the Indian woman's hand.

"D' pries'," she said, "Father Moran."

Eleanor thought a moment, racking her memory in vain for that name in

her convent life of Quebec. She was digging her toe in the dust of the

road.

"Was that before or after you went to the Black Hills, Calamity?"

But Calamity had gone without a word; and the stage came whipping

across the bridge from the Moyese Ranch; a double-tandem stage driven

by a bronzed fellow with one arm, whose management of the reins

absorbed Eleanor so that she forgot to notice the fat form hoisting her

suit case to the roof. Then, she was inside; and the door had swung

shut; and the fat form squeezed in next to the door; and she was lost

in her own thoughts oblivious of her close packed neighbors till the

stage stopped again with a jerk, and the sharp edge of a black

cart-wheel-hat decorated with plumes enough for an undertaker's wagon

cut a swath that threatened to slice off one of Eleanor's ears.

"I beg your pardon," said Eleanor.

"Oh, I guess tha' wuz my fault," and a mouthful of gold teeth above an

ash colored V of neck and below the most wonderful straw stack of wheat

colored hair simpered up at Eleanor from beneath the black

cart-wheel-hat; simpered and ended up in a funny little tittering

laugh. Eleanor took a quick glance at her neighbors, all men but the

cart-wheel-hat to one side and a little young-old lady opposite with a

hectic flush, and very protuberant hard mouth and beady little brown

eyes. Eleanor noticed the brown eyes were accompanied by red hair, and

she recognized the presiding genius of the English Colony.

"A beautiful morning for a ride down the Valley," remarked Eleanor

absently.

"What? I beg your pardon? Did you speak to me?"

It wasn't the words. It was the hard tone of surprise.

"We're in luck to have such a morning to ride down," amplified Eleanor.

"Yes," said the lady with the hectic flush; and Eleanor felt the gold

teeth simpering beneath the undertaker's plumes.

What was it? Eleanor took a second look at the two women, and

recognized both, the Sheriff's wife and the English lady. They were

arrayed gorgeously, her neighbor across in lavender silk, her elbow

traveller in black with a profusion of cheap lace round the ash colored

V of exposed skin: Eleanor wished the woman had powdered all the way

down. She, herself, had come garbed for the dust of stage travel, a

broad brimmed English sailor and a kakhi duster motoring coat. Was it

because she was not garbed as the others that they rebuffed her

friendly overtures, she wondered. At the next stop, she passed out to

go up and ride on the driver's seat, manifestly an impossible feat for

ladies in lavender and undertaker's plumes. A fat hand reached forward

to shove the door open. It was Bat Brydges'. She nodded her thanks,

and the handy man bowed with a sweep of his hat naming her aloud for

the whole stage to hear. If a look could have blasted Mr. Bat Brydges,

he would have been dissolved in gaseous matter from the expression that

passed over the face under the sailor hat. She heard the hilarity

break bounds inside as she mounted the driver's seat; and felt very

much as you have felt when you have come out of the clatter of the

orchestra pit where you have chanced to sit next to a musk-scented

neighbor.

But she forgot the lavender grandee and the gold teeth and the

undertaker's plumes, as she sat on the upper seat with the one-armed

driver behind the double tandem grays. The sun was coming up over the

Rim Rocks in a half fan of fire; and the light was on the Ridge; and

all the silver cataracts tossing down the sheer wall shone wind-blown

spray against the evergreens. The Valley widened as it dropped to the

leap and fume and swirl of the foaming river; and the double tandem

grays kept step with a proud chacking up of heads and bristling of

arched necks and movement of thigh and shoulder muscles under satin

skin like shuttles.

"You must be very proud of your beautiful horses," she said to the

driver.

The driver 'lowed he was: that 'un dappled on the rump there, that 'un

was foaled, let me see? year o' the rush to the Black Hills, with a

squirt of chewing tobacco over the front wheel and a damn't, and

another squirt and more damn't's; and before Eleanor realized the

one-armed driver had asked her if she wouldn't like to learn to drive

double tandems; and she had the reins in her hands; and the double

tandem grays took the bit in their teeth to show what double tandem

grays and ample oats could do.

"How-do," called the driver with a squirt of tobacco over the front

wheel at a rancher loping across the trail. "How-do; y' are up early,

y' son of a gun! What d' y' know?"

"Senator's goin' t' stand again this fall," called the man.

The driver emitted another damn't in true Western style just as

innocently as an Easterner says "Oh, yes, indeed," or an Englishman

says "My word." In fact Eleanor lost count of the damn't's.

"How ever do you manage it?" she asked shifting the reins.

"With my one arm, y' mean?" The stage driver laughed and aimed more

chewing tobacco at that innocent front wheel; and the question drew out

such a story of heroism in spite of the damn't's and the tobacco squids

as made her proud of human clay, just as she had been ashamed of human

something or other inside the stage with the lavender silk and the gold

teeth and Bat's frozen tallow smile.

"Why, it was the year o' the Kootenay rush, ye mind? No, ye don't

mind, ye weren't born then, were y'? Damn't," and a punctuation in

tobacco. "Wall, 'twas in the early days 'fore we had steam hoists an'

things." (Another punctuation mark--a good big one.) "We was usin' an

old hand hoist. Guess the shaft was about hundred feet down--straight

down, an' we was gettin' in the pay streak, bringin' up barrels o' rock

showin' more color every load. Wall, them loads was hauled up to the

dumps by a hand hoist y' onderstand, kind of winch, like y' turn a

handle in old fashioned down East wells. Wall--" (Another punctuation

mark and another dip for ink, so to speak, from the plug in the hand of

the one-armed driver.) "boys were all down under. Say--'twas in the

days when ol' Calamity was runnin' the hills. Know Calamity? She was

a wild 'un in _her_ day; an' they say MacDonald, the rich sheep man,

has kind o' sorter given her a home these late years. Wall--I ain't

the one t' say he shouldn't. Her morals weren't much better in them

days than the crazy patch quilts ladies used to make down East when I

was a boy; but she's settled down I hear; an' I ain't the one to say

MacDonald don't deserve credit for what he's done. She saved many a

poor miner's life from the Indians in them ol' days, saved 'em by a

shave, carried 'em in on her shoulder to the Deadwood Hospital, or

nussed 'em well on the spot, an' all the while, she wazn't no better

than she ought t' be; wazn't there a woman in Scripture like that?

Kind o' seems to me the church folks forgets that Rahub gurl!

Wall--'twas about those days." (More showers of damn't's and tobacco

on that front wheel.) "Boys was all under. Big load of rock was

comin' up. I waz man at the hoist, man on the easy job that day.

Wall--wad y' believe it, the damn thing bruk--bruk plum whoop an'

started spinnin' round back side first with the load o' rock an' the

boys under comin' up the ladder. I yelled for a kid we had workin'

round to get me a jack wrench, a hand spike, Hell, any ol' thing to

stop her kitin' that load o' rock down on the boys! Kid stood gopin'

there an' sayin' 'What d'y' say?' Say,--damn't--an' that load o' rock

goin' plumb down on the boys, heavy enough to smash 'em to pulp. There

weren't nothin' handy near 'cept me, so I jumped this here arm that you

find missin' right into the wheel! It stopped her all right, the load

didn't fall on the boys; and they got up all right by the ladder;

but--say, mebbe the cogs o' that damn wheel didn't do a thing to my

arm. Say--the doctor didn't need to amputate it. That winch did him

out o' his job."

"You mean," said Eleanor, slowing the grays to a reluctant walk down

grade, while the driver clamped the front wheel brake with his foot,

"you mean because there was no crowbar, or anything to stop the hoist

flying backwards and killing the men under the load of rock, you mean

because there was no crowbar, you jumped into the wheel, yourself?"

"Sure," said the man astonished at her question; and because Eleanor

was a true Westerner and didn't mind the tobacco squids and the

damn't's in the least (where they belonged) she gave that one-armed

driver a look that would have made any man proud: only the one-armed

driver didn't see it.

"They took up a purse an' wanted to give me a perscription--damn't, but

I told 'em t' turn it in t' the Horspital. Any man w'd a' done same

for a yellow dog. What d'y' want t' give a fellow a medal for not

bein' stinkin' coward?"

Eleanor laughed. It was a happy silver laugh like the light on the

Ridge cataracts. Somehow, the one-armed stage driver with his

unconscious heroism and equally unconscious profanity gave her a sense

of the big wholesome unconscious outdoor world, just as the lavender

silks and undertaker's plumes and tallow smile inside smothered her

with a drugged sense of heavy unwholesome musk. The one-time miner did

not know it; but what Eleanor was saying to herself was--"So much bad

in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us." Then she

thought of the Senator and his genial smile and his voice soft as a

woman's, and his love of flowers. He, too, must have his vein of

heroism, if one could only find it. She thought and thought as the

tandem grays arched their necks at the sound of the tramway bells in

the nearing city; thought and thought, vague wordless thoughts full of

hope; vague womanish thoughts that women have thought since time began

of finding that magic vein of heroism in the Man that is to transmute

slag into gold, hog into human, and greed into generosity, and lust

into love; thought and thought the gentle womanish hoping-against-hope

thoughts that women have worn out their lives thinking and enslaved

their bodies and pawned their souls. If only one could find _that_

vein in the Senator, the battle would be won without the letting of

blood and smashing of reputations; as if peace without victory were

ever worth while since time began.

Then, the stage was rattling over the pressed brick pavement of Smelter

City; and the tandem grays were pretending to shy at the electric cars;

and the one-armed driver came near expectorating his entire internal

anatomy out of sheer joy and pride in the arched necks and the frail

driver with the black curls under the broad brimmed English sailor hat

handling the reins. She had pulled off her heavy buckskin gloves; and

she never knew how absurdly like matches her fingers looked to the big

one-time miner beside her; nor how the exhilaration brought the tints

of the painters' flower to her cheeks and the light of the Alpine pools

to her eyes. Every man on the street turned and looked back, while the

gold teeth inside blinked with self conscious certainty that _they_ did

it; and the lavender silks wore a peculiarly cynical smile. Loafers

sat up and followed the stage with eager eyes far as they could see it

and said, "By Gawd--whose gurl is that?" Oh, Mr. Bat Brydges intended

every bar room buffer and loafer in the State should know, 'whose girl'

that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat

considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he

had; but his lights were smutty and in need of trimming.

The stage dropped the gold teeth at a dentist's office, and the

lavender silks at a manicure's 'studio,' I believe she called it; and

Bat swung off while the coach was still moving; and Eleanor reluctantly

gave up the reins at the transcontinental station.

"Thank you so much. I don't know when I have had as good a time," she

said, giving the stage driver the sensation of a king in disguise.

And, of course, the transcontinental was late. When was it not late,

when you were in a hurry?

"How late?"

"Four hours, last report," the operator answered.

She sent her suit case across to the hotel, and shopped, and loitered

up and down the platform. It was not until afterwards she remembered

one of the loafer brigade dangling legs from the station platform

looking over his shoulder with an evil smile.

"Say--d' y' see the evening paper?" he had asked. "That's her;" and

there was a laugh that somehow sent her back inside the station feeling

vaguely uneasy.

"I think I'll telephone them up at the Ranch not to keep dinner

waiting," she said to the operator.

He was reading the paper. He looked at her a moment before answering.

If a human face could have been expressed in a punctuation mark, that

agent's face should have been drawn in a big question mark, with the

eyes put somewhere in the hook, and the neck growing longer and longer

as he looked.

"Public telephone right across the road," he said.

In avoidance of the loafers' looks, she had walked unheeding straight

into the Senator's office. Her first instinct was to withdraw. Then,

she saw Brydges; and that curious sensation of repulsion obsessed her.

She literally shot the handy man in full retreat with one glance.

Then, the joy of the ride down, the heroism of the driver, came back.

Perhaps it was the jar of roses, but the thought came what if _she_

could find that vein of heroism in the Senator. When women risk their

souls on that "if" and the souls of friends and children; is it vanity,

I wonder, or is it the will o' the wisp light that lights erring feet

to darkness?

She thought more highly of the Senator that he did not offer to shake

hands, just as most of us would think more highly of Judas Iscariot if

he had not kissed Christ. Being a Westerner, she had the Westerner's

horror of a maverick sporting the brand of a thoroughbred. The Senator

took off his glasses and sat tapping them above the U. S. Geological

Survey map.

"I trust," he began, "that my man expressed to you my deep regret--my

deep distress over--"

"Don't . . . please, don't," interrupted Eleanor, with a passionate

break in her voice. "I know you are honest, Senator Moyese, honest to

what you believe is right; and I don't want you to feel that you have

to lie because I am a woman."

The Senator opened his mouth, took a breath, and shut it again.

She understood him well enough to know that if he had to toy with his

glasses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first.

Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion

of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and

said--"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They are a new variety of American

Beauties. See, each petal has a white veining? Know how those roses

are produced? Ages and ages of poor trash worthless common roses have

been sacrificed to produce this perfect type."

"That's your theory of life, isn't it?" she asked, vaguely conscious

that the dragon was disarming her anger.

"Isn't it nature's?" asked Moyese gently. "The fit survive because

they are fit; the exceptional; the few; while the worthless go to

waste?"

Before Eleanor realized, she had lost all consciousness of self and was

pleading passionately leaning forward across the desk.

"Isn't Christ's theory better, Senator, to make all the unfit into fit?

Isn't Christ's theory the theory of science? Science aims to make a

whole field of perfect corn; not just one perfect cob. I know that;

for I read it in your speech at the opening of the Agricultural

College. If we keep on sacrificing the interests of the many to the

interests of the few, aren't we working back to savagery, Senator?"

The Senator drew the finest of the roses from the jar. "It's a matter

of taste, perhaps, Miss Eleanor; but I prefer this to a whole jarful of

scrubs."

"Then you are not working for democracy. It's just as Mrs. Williams

says, all you foreign multimillionaires are subverting our Nation by

working for old fashioned despotism in disguise; sacrificing the many

to the few."

"Oh, does Mrs. Williams say that?" asked Moyese reflectively, pushing

back from the desk and clasping his hands round one knee. "That may

be; republicanism doesn't necessarily mean letting the blockheads rule!

It may mean giving equal opportunity for the fit men to come to the top

and rule. Did you come in to talk over these things with me, Miss

Eleanor? I must make a convert of you; it would win over Wayland and

Williams and your father."

"No, I didn't. I came in here by mistake. The operator told me I'd

find a public telephone across the road; and I wasn't noticing where I

was going, and I came in here; but all the way down, I had been

thinking of you, Senator Moyese. I kept thinking if you could only be

made to see the New Day that is dawning, perhaps you would meet it half

way. I rode in the driver's seat coming down; and he told me how he

lost his arm; Senator, think of the hero in him?"

"And you thought there might be some of the hero in me, too?" Moyese

laughed, the noiseless genial laugh creasing his chin and his white

vest.

"While you laugh, you are letting your rose wither."

He handed the rose to her. "Yes, I know that fellow. I was in the

Kootenay when he lost his arm, torn out all bloody right from the

shoulder socket; had to pry the cogs up to get him out. They collected

a purse of a thousand for him; but he wouldn't take a cent: handed it

over to the hospital. Something in that fellow bigger than self kind

of popped out and surprised himself."

She noticed him looking at the wall clock as he talked, but not being a

business woman did not know what that meant.

"There's something bigger than self with us all, Senator; and we have

to work for it."

"My dear child, do you think you need to tell an old stager that?" He

was kicking the creases out of his trousers. This time, she could not

mistake the signal, and felt her womanish idealism of mining for the

hidden vein of heroism both childish and cheapening. She rose and

placed the flower back on the desk.

"There's something bigger than you or me, my dear," he went on,

"something for which every man worth his salt must work and fight, and

which a woman does not understand."

"And that is?"

"His party," said Moyese.

"But Senator, there is something bigger than party, and if a man works

against That, he'll injure his party."

"And that is?"

"His Nation," said the girl.

Moyese gave her a quick sharp look that was not unkindly. In fact,

Eleanor could read that it was lonely, irritated, isolated.

"My dear," he said, coming round where she stood, "we differ on

fundamentals. The whole nation to-day is divided on fundamentals. I'm

no mealy mouth to curse plutocracy in order to please the mob.

Plutocracy fills the workman's dinner pail and keeps the mills going

and opens the mines and builds the railroads. Mobocracy, your grubby

corn cob and trashy roses, that, what does it do? Mouthe and mouthe

and try to pull down what is above it! It will have to be fought out!

No? It will not be another French Revolution! _Our bullets are

ballots, nowadays_; and the American people get exactly the form of

Government which they want. If they want another form, it remains with

them to fight for it. The umpire of all is fact--Miss Eleanor; and the

facts of each side will have to be fought out; the better man will win;

be sure of that! _The facts that are facts not fictions will win, with

ballots for bullets_. For my part, I'll not dodge the issue; and I

hope you'll not think me any the less of the hero for that?"

He had extended his hand as he talked, and to her surprise, she found

herself taking it when with a wave of revulsion, the memory of the

Ridge and the Rim Rocks came back.

"And government is a mere game of politics?" she said. "And politics

resolves itself into brute force; and a murder more or less doesn't

matter? Fordie, I suppose, would be classed as one of the scrubs

sacrificed for this perfection of party?"

His hand dropped hers as if she had struck him.

"You did not know that you were overheard? 'See that no harm comes to

the boy.' You did not mean Fordie to be murdered; but they were to

crowd the sheep over 'to beat Hell,' 'the sheep were to go it

blind'--my father's and Mr. Williams' property was to be sacrificed to

build up the fortune of the cattle barons: they too, I suppose, are

scrubs sacrificed among the many for the wealth of the one, who happens

to be yourself. You broke the law; but because you did not order

Fordie's murder, you think the blood guiltiness from that broken law

does not rest upon you. You say it must all be fought out. You force

the fight--"

He raised his hand to stop her. She remembered afterwards how ashy

white and aged his face became. He walked to the door and opened it.

She passed out. So that was to what her womanish mining for the vein

of the ideal heroism had led. She had been politely shown out. It was

as Wayland had said: there was no middle course; and it was also as the

Senator had said, it must be fought out, and the bullets were to be

ballots.

The Senator slammed his door shut and snapped the yale lock. Then he

noticed the rose she had left, and tossed it in the spittoon.

"Thank God," he ejaculated fervently as he sank back in the swing

chair, "_Thank God women are not in politics. There is always

something to be thankful for_."

Then, an idea seemed to strike him. He rang the telephone with fury,

and it didn't improve his temper to hear the saucy little central

informing her elbow mate that "that ol' fellah wuz burnin' the wire up

alive."

"Is that 'The Herald'? Brydges there? That you, Brydges? Listen, the

night you were up on the Ridge, have you any perfect proof that Wayland

didn't go down when you were asleep? Eh? You turned in at ten; and

you found him still stamping about at twelve? Is that it? What? No?

Don't be a damphool, _cut that out_. Of course, he didn't go down to

the Ranch House. Cut that whole scandal thing out. There's nothing in

it; but I think we can locate our missing knight errant. Understand?

He's got to be smashed? What? _You had printed the scandal story

before you ever came in to me at all_? Dictated it right in to the

typo machines? In the 'Independent'? Oh, well, I'm glad it didn't go

in the 'City Herald'? But it did go in; one evening paper?" Then the

wrath of the strong man broke bounds. If he had been a stage villain

the curtain drop would have fallen on a red faced gentleman pounding

the desk, tearing at the telephone, hurling his chair about the office

and generally, as the saucy little central remarked, "eating the wire

up alive."

When Brydges' chief indulged in explosives that necessitated the repair

of furniture the next day, the handy man always stood strictly and

silently at attention. He knew the meaning of the stage thunder: it

was the trick of the Indian medicine man, who fires guns to bring down

rain. Bat knew that the fulminations were of a piece with all the

other orders to do and not to do, an effort to get results while

diverting the thunderbolt from the rain maker's head; for by one of

those strange contingencies that Shakespeare defines as an opportunity

of evil, when the handy man had gone to the 'Herald,' the news editor

chanced to be out. Bat crossed to the 'Independent's' office. It

lacked but half an hour of the time to lock up the press, and on

condition that the story should be "a scoop," Bat was sent out to the

composing room to dictate straight to the printer, standing over the

linotype machine.

What was "the story" that he dictated? If you know where to look, you

can see its prototype seven times a week. It was written jocularly;

oh, it was exceedingly funny with all sorts of veiled references to

naughtiness that couldn't be printed, pretty naughtiness, you

understand, the kind you wink at, as was to be expected from a little

beauty, a brunette, chic, etc. (I forget how many French words Bat

tucked in: he had to look 'em up in the French-English appendix to

Webster's Dictionary as the proof came off the galley), the well known

daughter of the richest sheep rancher in the Valley. "The story" was

headed: "Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley." Bat played "the human

interest" feature for all it was worth; also the trick of suspended

interest. It began by informing the public that a pretty scandal was

disturbing a certain Valley not a hundred miles from the Rim Rocks, the

essential details of which could not be given, would probably _never_

be printed, for obvious reasons. Then followed a solid paragraph of

nonsense verse inserted as prose; about a Ranger-man, Ranger-man,

running away, 'Cause pa-pah, dear pa-pah comes home for to-day; But his

Lincoln green coatie the Ranger forgot; And pa-pah, dear pa-pah came

home raging hot; The Ranger-man, Ranger-man was still on the run, For

pa-pah, dear pa-pah was out with a gun, He'd heaved up his war club and

jangled his spear, And swore by my halidom what doth that coat here,

etc., etc. Any school boy could have trolled off yards of the same

drivelling cleverness; and Eleanor's innocent telephone call was, of

course, lugged in.

There followed a garbled account of poor Calamity's errant days among

the miners of the Black Hills. The account had no reference to her

heroism in the early mining days, when she roved in man's attire over

the hills to rescue wounded miners from the Sioux. It set forth only

her blazoning sins; evidently on the assumption that carrion is

preferable to meat. And then tucked ingeniously into this account was

veiled mention of a rich sheepman, too well known to need naming, who

was evidently making reparation for the errors of his youth by

according to the mother as good treatment as the daughter under the

same roof. Not a name was mentioned except Calamity's. I trust it is

obvious to you that it was not libelous, because it was without malice.

In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story,"

look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts

which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find

the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are

keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on a morsel.

Bat did even better than the clever story dictated straight to the typo

in the composing room. Always in the West, there flit in and out what

we Westerners used to call "floaters," gentlemen (and ladies) who come

in on a pullman car and go out on a pullman car and sometimes venture

as far away from safety as a hotel rotunda, then syndicate their

impressions of the West, in the East, and gravely correct twenty year

Westerners with twenty minute impressions. I don't believe on the

whole, as Westerners, we like them very much; but obviously, one

doesn't kill a mosquito with a hammer.

Bat caught such a floater on the delayed transcontinental express. He

was seeing the West through a car window. The East will not see the

jocularity of that fact. The West will, though it may smile with a

twist. Bat's floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had

issued a magazine to boom Western real estate, suburban lots seven

miles from a flat car, which was all there was of the city. For

exactly fifteen dollars (when the floater's impressions came out, I

made exact inquiries as to what Bat had paid him; and it seemed to me

that floater sold himself very cheap) the travelling impressionist took

over Bat's story of "the Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley" and

rehashed it with the name MacDonald given as Macdonel, and syndicated

the scandal against the Forest Service throughout the East.

The transcontinental express had made up lost time and came roaring in

just as the stage rattled up to the platform. MacDonald and Williams

stepped off the observation car. Eleanor shook hands.

"You know about the sheep?" she asked.

"Yes, we have your letter," answered MacDonald. "That's why we stayed

so long buying grazing ground in the Upper Pass."

"Here, boy." He bought an evening paper; and helped Eleanor inside the

stage. Then he mounted to the top with Williams. There were only

three other occupants in the stage, the lady of the lavender silks, the

gold teeth, and a workman, sodden drunk and drowsy, in the upper

corner. The lady of the lavender silks had a complexion that looked as

if it had been dipped in a fountain of perennial youth. She was

leaning over the evening paper which the undertaker plumes had

evidently shown her. The heat had not improved Eleanor's stiff linen

collar and the dust had certainly not added to the style of her kakhi

motor coat. It was not until afterwards she remembered how both the

heads flew apart from the evening paper the moment she entered the

stage.

"Have you had a pleasant day shopping, my dear?" It was the lavender

silk with the hard mouth actually breaking in a smile. It was the "my

dear" that struck Eleanor's ear as odd. The manner said plainly as

words could say "You weren't before; but you _are_ now."

"Oh, it was rather hot," answered Eleanor quietly.

"Y're on the wrong soide. Y're in the sun. If y'll sit over b'side

off me, my dear gurl--"

Eleanor nearly exploded. 'Girl' was the limit: 'lady' would have been

worse; 'woman' was good enough for her; but, 'gurl.' It was the

manner, the proprietary manner, you are one of us _now_: what had

happened? She did not answer. She raised her eye lashes and looked

the speaker over from the undertaker's plumes and the gold teeth and

the ash colored V of skin to the clock-work stockings and high heeled

slippers. Then, the stage was stopping violently and her father

appeared on the rear steps at the door. She had never seen him look

so. His eyes were blazing. It was not until afterwards she remembered

how the lavender silks had crushed the evening paper all up and sat

upon it.

"There is a little girl up on the seat with the driver. You'll find it

pleasanter there going up the Valley."

She remembered afterwards, while her father gave her a hand up the

front wheel, a voice inside the stage exclaimed: "Say, thought they wuz

goin' to be fireworks. If Dan'd read that in th' paper 'bout me, he'd

a gone on awful."

"Oh, no, he's a thoroughbred all right, if it is part Indian."

Then her father and Williams had gone down inside the stage; and she

was left with the driver and a diminutive little bit of humanity, that

looked as if it had escaped from one of the rag shops of Shanty Town.

She wore a tawdry thing on her head with bright carmine ostrich plumes

that had lost their curl in the rain. A red plush cape was round her

shoulders; and Eleanor could hardly believe her eyes--she had not seen

them since she went through the East End of London--they were copper

toed boots.

"M' name is Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan. What's y'rs?" demanded the

little old face.

Eleanor didn't answer. She was trying to think what had changed the

driver's friendly manner. He had neither greeted her nor proffered the

reins. And now, oh, philosopher of the human heart, for each of us is

a philosopher inside, answer me: why did the driver, who was a bit of a

hero, and the lavender silk, who was an adventuress, and the gold

teeth, who was a slattern, neither pure nor simple, why did each and

all eagerly believe the evil, so vague it had not been stated, written

by an unknown blackmailer, in the face of the reputation of purity

sitting beside them?

"M' father uz down inside," continued the child. "He's sleep. We're

goin' t' live on th' Ridge. D' y' know what a Ridge iz? We're goin'

t' be waal-thy--m' father says so. He says we won't have a thing t' do

but sit toight an' whuttle un' sput, un' whuttle un' sput fur three

years, then the com'ny wull huv t' pay us what he asks. He says they

think they'll pay him off fur three hun'red; but he says he _knows_, he

does; un' he's goin' t' hold 'em up fur half. Unless they give him

half he'll tell--"

"What?" asked Eleanor, suddenly wakening up to the meaning of the

chatter. "What is your father?"

"He's trunk jes' now," said the child. Then she reached her face up to

Eleanor's confidentially. The little teeth were very unclean and the

breath was very garlicky, indeed. "He's goin' t' be a dummy," she

whispered with a gurgle of childish glee, "un' he says he'll easily

hold 'em up for twenty thousand without doin' a thing fur five years

but whuttle un' sput."

"A dummy? Oh," said Eleanor.

Even the driver relaxed enough to flick the tandem grays with his whip

and permit a twisted smile to play round the tobacco wad in his cheek.

They ate their late supper in the Ranch House by lamp light, her father

scarcely uttering a word, the evening paper still sticking out of his

coat pocket.

"I know this sheep affair has been a horrible, hideous loss," she said.

"Is that what's worrying you, father?"

MacDonald shoved back from the table.

"Pah, that's nothing," he said.

He stood waiting till the German cook had removed the dishes. Then he

drew the paper from his pocket.

"There's something here I'm sorry you'll have to know," he said. "You

won't understand how low the meaning of most of it is; but I'm sorry

they hit you to try and hurt me."

He threw himself down in a big leather chair. She took the paper

mechanically and sat on the arm of the chair to read. She read slowly

and deliberately to the end. Then she re-read both columns; and the

paper fell from her hands. She did not know it, but the same

suppressed fury was blazing in her face as she had seen on his at the

stage door.

"So that is what was doing when I went to the Senator's office this

afternoon to plead with him that things could not go on in the old

plundering way. That is what his man's visit meant here the other day

to express sympathy with you for the loss of the sheep? Now I

understand what the loafers at the station meant, and the driver's

unfriendliness, and those unclean women; and to think they framed it

all out of that innocent coat. You know, father, Mr. Wayland had

carried Fordie down from the Rim Rocks. We carried the body in

together."

"Where is Wayland?" asked MacDonald; and she poured out the full story

of all that had happened. I hope, gentle reader, you will please to

observe that if the father had viewed the facts of that recital through

the same tainted mind as Mr. Bat Brydges, a breach would have occurred

that neither time nor regret could have bridged. I confess when I see

breaches occur that wrench lives and break hearts through love

harboring suspicion, I don't think the love is very much worth the

name. You can't both have your plant grow, and keep tearing up the

roots to see if they are growing. You can't both throw mud in a spring

and drink out of a well of love undefiled. If love grows by what it

feeds on, so does suspicion. He did not once look up questioningly to

her eyes. Instead, he reached up and took hold of her hand. For the

first time in their lives, father and daughter came together.

"But there is one thing you are mistaken about, father. They did not

hit me, to hurt you. They hit me, to stop Dick Wayland."

"Why, what difference can you make to Wayland?"

She hid her face on his shoulder.

"I love him," she said.

When the German cook came in with the washed dishes, father and

daughter still sat in the big arm chair; and you may depend on it, that

flunky carried out to the ranch hands, guzzling over the evening paper

in the bunk house, a proper report of a heart broken father and a

repentant daughter; for when we look out on the world, do we see the

world at all; or do we see the shadows of our own inner souls cast out

on the passing things of life?

CHAPTER XX

A FAITH WORKABLE FOR MEN ON THE JOB

"The point is," said Wayland, "though, we have driven out this nest of

beauties, we have no guarantee another nest won't take their place; and

so we're not much farther ahead than before, with the chances I'll be

called down for exceeding my duties."

"And y'll keep on bein' where y' were before till y' get the Man Higher

Up," interrupted Matthews.

They had camped among the red firs where the Desert crossed the State

Line and merged from cut rocks to broken timber. It was seven weeks

since they had set out from the Upper Mesas of the Rim Rocks, four

weeks since they had left the saline pool. Man and beast, fagged to

the point of utter exhaustion, retraced steps slower than fresh hunters

on an untried trail. Also, going down, they had followed hard wherever

fugitives led. Coming back, they struck across to the Western Desert

road, and travelled from belt to belt of the irrigation farms, with

their orange-green cottonwood groves and bluish-green alfalfa fields

and little match box houses stuck out of sight among peach orchards.

The parched-earth, burnt-oil smell gave place to the minty odor of hay

in wind rows, with the cool water tang of the big irrigation ditch

flowing liquid gold in the yellow August light. One evening, Matthews

looked back to the looming heat waving and writhing above the orange

sands beneath a sky of lilac and topaz round a sunset flowing from a

dull red ball of fire. Far ahead, the edges of forested mountain cut

the heat haze with opal winged light above what might have been peaks

or clouds.

"'Tis beautiful, Wayland, y'r lone Desert world; but man alive, it's

sad! Y' call some the Painted Desert, don't ye? 'Tis like a painted

woman, Wayland, vera beautiful, vera fair to look on an' allurin', but

a' out o' perspective; an' Wayland, the painted woman is always a bit

lonely in the bottom o' her soul spite o' harsh laugh. So is the

Desert wi' its harsh silence. Those as like to be shrivelled up wi'

thirst, may have it! A'm a plain man!"

Then one morning, the opal swimming above the smoke haze of the North

shone,--was it the shape of a cross?

"Wayland, man, look!"

The old frontiersman had taken off his hat.

"Man alive, open y'r throat an' let out a yell."

"I'm too busy drinking in the air," answered Wayland.

And they both laughed. The mule and the broncho stood pointing their

ears forward. Wayland's mare, which he had bought at one of the

irrigation farms, lifted up her neck and whinnied. It was at that

irrigation farm operated by a retired newspaper man from Chicago--they

had got a reading of the first newspaper seen since leaving the Valley

and learned that the bodies of the two remaining fugitive outlaws had

been found by the railway navvies. Wayland thoughtfully removed his

Forest Service medallion. Men do not question each other over much in

the West. They had passed on unquestioning and unquestioned, Wayland a

disguised figure in his new ready-to-wear kakhi, not a sign of the

Forest Service about them, but the green felt hat still worn by the old

preacher, and the hatchets fastened to the saddles.

"How many Holy Cross Mountains have y' in the West, Wayland?"

"Three that I know of."

"That's ours, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's ours: the old priests and explorers scattered the name round

pretty thick in the old days."

"How far do you make it?"

"About a hundred miles, perhaps more!"

"Been a pilot to the priests and explorers for centuries?"

"I guess so, sir."

"Wayland, may it be so t' th' Nation, now! Y've got a wilderness an' a

Red Sea an' a Dead Sea an' a devilish dirty lot o' travellin' to do on

th' way t' y'r promised land; an' A'm thinkin', man, y've wasted a lot

o' time on the trail worshippin' th' calf; an' God knows who is y'r

Moses."

They camped that night among the evergreens with red fir branches for

beds, the first beds they had known for seven weeks, with the needled

end pointing in and the branch end out, "unless y' want t' sleep on

stumps," the old preacher had admonished the bed maker. And during the

night, the wind sprang up shaking all the pixie tambourines in the

pines and the hemlocks, and setting the poplars and cottonwoods

clapping their hands. A spurt of moisture hit the old man's face.

"Man alive, but is that rain?" he asked. Wayland laughed. "Only a

drop from a broken pine needle; but rain would taste good, wouldn't it?"

"D' y' smell it? Smell hard! It's like cloves."

Wayland laughed. He had had all these sensations of coming back from

South to North before.

The next night, they camped beside a chorus of waterfalls, joyous,

gurgling, laughing silver water, not the sullen silent blood red

streams of the Desert that flow without a sound but the plunk of the

soft bank corroding and falling in. They could not talk. They lay in

quiet, listening to the tinkle and trill and treble of the silver flow

over the stones; to the little waves lipping and lisping and lapping

through the grasses; and when the moon came up, every rill showed a

silver light. Wayland was thinking,--need I tell what he was thinking?

Was he thinking at all; or was he drinking, drinking, drinking life

from a fountain of memory immanent as present consciousness? He tossed

restlessly. He sat up with his face in his hands. When he turned, the

old man had risen and was stripping.

"A'm goin' t' find a pool an' go in, Wayland. Dry farmin' may be good

for crops; but this dry bath business o' y'r Desert,--'tis not for a

North man. Better come along! If A can find it to my neck, y'll need

a cant hook to get me out 'fore daylight!"

They had come back from their plunge and were spreading the slickers

above the fir branches for bed, when Matthews began to talk in a low

dreamy voice, more as a man thinking out loud than one uttering a

confessional. It was the first word of religion the Ranger had heard

him utter. Wayland had really come to wonder when the old preacher

prayed. When he came to know him better, he realized that a good man

may pray standing on his feet, or striding to duty, readily as on prone

knees.

"'Tis like the water o' life, Wayland! Men laugh at that phrase

to-day! Oh, A know vera well, we've no time for an old or a new

dispensation nowdays. We're too busy wi' the golden calf, an' the

painted woman, an' th' market place, an' th' den o' thieves; an' when

th' vision faileth, the people perish! 'Ye shall have a just balance

an' a just ephah'; 'an' take away y'r offerings an' y'r burnt offerings

an y'r gifts, saith the Lord of Hosts.' Ram _that_ down the throat of

y'r church-buildin' thieves, an' y'r bribe-givin' pirates, who steal a

billion out o' th' Nation's pocket, then take out an insurance policy

against a Hell, they're no so sure doesn't exist, by givin' back a

million t' th' people they've plundered! Tell me y'r old

dispensation's past? A could preach a sermon from th' oldest book in

the Bible w'ud burn up Fifth Avenue an' have y'r churches sendin' in a

call for the p'lice t' cart me away t' a lunatic asylum! Ah, yes, A

know they'll tell y' A'm not learned an' don't know Hebrew! No; but A

know th' language o' th' man on the street; an A know life; an' A know

God; an' A know how to putt righteousness in the end o' my doubled

fist; which is what th' world is wantin'. Y'r learned men, what are

they do in' for th' man on the street? 'Darkening counsel without

knowledge,' while the people go gropin' in the dark for light.

"Y' wonder how a man, who was a whiskey smuggler an' a gambler an' a

contractor, who could skin the Devil, comes to be a preacher, Wayland;

a missionary t' th' Cree?"

"Yes, I have wondered, sometimes," confessed Wayland. "I could not

just reconcile you with the poverty-stricken, down-in-the-mouth--"

"Don't say 'poverty-stricken', Wayland! A'm . . . rich. A've _never_

known want! God has taken care of me since A put it squarely up to

Him! A've my wife! A've my children! A've my ranch; an' my ranch

pays for the school! A've never known want! Why, man, thirty dollars

a year is more than A need for m' clothes! A'm rich! What wud A be

doin' goin' among a lot o' kiddie boys t' study Hebrew when A know the

language o' the man on the street; an' A know God? 'Twas the bishop's

idea t' have me come t' College at forty years o' age an' potter t'

A-B-C an' white collar an' clerics buttoned up the back an' a' the

rest." The old frontiersman laughed. "Poh! What for wud A waste m'

years doin' that? A'd wasted forty servin' the Devil. A'd no more

years t' waste. A must be up, up, up an' doin', Wayland, the way y'r

up an' doin', for the Nation. A'd earned m' livin' when A served th'

Devil! A would earn m' livin' when A served God; an' as A spoke th'

Cree, A tackled them first; an' now we're buildin' our hospital.

"How did it happen, y' ask?" The old frontiersman sat down on a log.

"God knows! A don't! A can no more tell y', Wayland, what happened t'

me, than y' cud tell a man what comin' off th' Desert an' bathin' in a

cool mountain stream was like; no more than y' cud tell what happened

t' y', when y' first looked in her eyes an' read, love! God, man, it

_was_ love! That's what happened t' me! A all of a sudden got t' see

what life meant when ye bathed in love. God looked into m' eyes,

Wayland, that was it! An' all th' dirt o' me shrivelled up an' th' mud

in m' manhood, way yours did when y' looked in her eyes! A needed

washin', Wayland, that was it, an' then A saw Him on the Cross as y'

see _that_--yon Cross there in the sky. 'Sense o' sin!' Man alive,

A'd never heard them words till that night."

"What night?" asked Wayland, quietly.

"Oh, 'twas a hot night, Wayland, my boy; an' hot for more reasons than

one. Th' tin horns an' the plugs an' the toots had come up t' our

construction camp, an' of a Monday mornin' after Sunday's spree, y' cud

count fifty dead navvies, Chinks an' Japs an' dagoes, washed down th'

river after gamblers' fights an' chucked up in the sands o' Kickin'

Horse! Well, a lot o' big fellows o' th' railway company had come

thro' that day on the first train. There was Strathcona, who was plain

Donald Smith in them days, an' Van Horn, who was manager, an' Ross, who

was contractor! A'd been workin' m' crews on the high span bridge,

there,--y' don't know,--well no matter, 'tis the highest in the Rockies

an' dangerous from a curve! A didn't want that train load o' directors

to risk crossin': wasn't safe! M' crew hadn't one main girder placed;

but Ross was a headstrong dour man; an' Smith--Smith wud a' sent a

train thro' Hell in them days to prove that railway could be built.

Full lickety smash their train came onto that bridge o' mine off the

sharp curve: the dagoes went yellow as cheese wi' fear, th' Chinks

chattered in their jaws, an' the Japs: well the Japs hung on to the

girder an' the cranes. A saw th' bridge heave an' swerve, an' th'

girder went smashin' to th' bottom o' yon creek bed so far below y'

could scarcely see the water; Ross was ridin' wi' th' engineer. Ross

kept his head, ordered them to throw throttle open. All that saved

that train load o' directors was th' train got across before th' weight

smashed thro'; way a quick skater can cross thin ice. Man alive, but A

was mad, riskin' m' crew o' two hundred workmen for a train load o'

rash directors! Th' train stopped! A dashed up! Ross opened out, his

throttle was full open: so was mine; an' th' steam an' smoke escapin'

from yon big mogul,--well, Wayland, them was my unregenerate days! A

may as well confess, Wayland, A gave him back all he'd given with

sulphur thrown in extra; till Donald Smith poked his head out o' th'

private car callin', 'Go on, Ross! Go on, what are you delayin' for?'

Well, then, three of us contractors and th' company doctor was summoned

to th' coast next week. We were all so mad at the fool rashness, we

had our resignations in our pockets. They had our pay checks ready;

but when they saw all four of us had our resignations written, well,

everybody took a cool breath; an' A think mebbee th' wise little man o'

that private car sent across something to help us wash away bitter

memories! Anyway, 'twas a hot night, Wayland! Y' couldn't drink one

of the four under th' table; an' we had cashed our checks at the pay

car! A was playin' wi' th' doctor for partner! Mebbee, it was that

little night cap from the private car, mebbee, well, in an hour or two,

three month's wages for four men was in the middle o' that table; an'

mebbee th' loafers in that saloon didn't sit up! Mebbee, somebody from

that private car didn't saunter in t' look us four fools over! Wayland

man, we won it all, th' doctor an' me! Th' other two wanted to play on

their watches, they wud a' pawned th' clothes off their backs; but we

wouldn't let them! We gave 'em back enough to grub stake 'em back to

their job! Then some one says, th' vera words: A can hear them yet,

'Let's go across an' hear those damned evangelists: there's a white

faced whiskers, an' a little clean shaved jumpin' jack skippin' all

over the backs o' the church seats pretendin' he's Henry Ward Beecher

an' sayin' in a fog horn voice, 'I like that.' Let's go an' raise Hell.

"Wayland, man, we went across! 'Twas all true, there was the white

faced fat man; an' there was the little clean chopped chap jumpin' all

over the backs o' th' seats; an' there was a lot o' snivellin' Saints

in Israel, women that cry an' sissie men that get converted an'

converted at every meetin'! Man, Wayland, A'd like to dump th' job lot

o' such folks out in a cesspool! They do religion more harm than the

Devil! They're about as like what fightin' Christians ought to be as a

spit wad's like a bullet! Well, we went in with a whoop; but God

wasn't out for the sissies that night, Wayland: he was out with a gun

for red blood men! He got us, Wayland! That's all! 'Twasn't the poor

puny preachers, perhaps 'twas th' music: th' fat one cud sing, but when

we came out the doctor was cryin'; poor fellow he killed himself in D.

T.'s later; an' A was all plugged up wi' cold in m' head blowin' m'

nose! 'Boys,' says I, 'here's where I get off. Here's y'r money back.

A've put up a pretty good fight for the Devil so far an' A've earned m'

way! Now, A'm goin' t' fight for God an' earn m' way!' They didn't

want to take the money back. They didn't believe it. A finished my

job on the railroad, then A slummed it in th' cities, this was when the

bishop tried to turn me school boy at forty, an' to dig in y'r

graveyard o' theology; that was before m' brother was bishop and why, A

hiked for Indians, Wayland! A know the Cree tongue, an' A know the

need o' decency in th' tepees, an' A know the trick o' puttin'

Christianity into th' end o' m' fist on white blackguards! An' that's

all."

"Is that all?" repeated Wayland; and he gave the old frontiersman the

same kind of a look, Matthews had given him that day going up the face

of the Pass precipice.

"Yes, that's all there was to it; an' A could no more tell y' what

happened, Wayland, than y' could tell a man what happened when y'

jumped in that pool an' got washed clean! Better try it, Wayland!"

They sat late listening to the gurgle and trill and tinkle of the water

slipping over the stones. Neither man said anything more, nor mouthed,

nor kneeled, nor amened, nor did save as men among men do and say: but

somehow Wayland had never felt so sure of the God, who was Love and

whose Love washed men clean, being, as he told himself, 'on the job.'

It may not have been religion; and it may not have been theology; but I

think it was the workable conviction that many a fighting man

incorporates into his life. Perhaps, it was what Christians call

Belief, only we have so slimed that good word over with hypocrisy that

it's hard for fighting working men among men, women among women, people

on the job, to mine down to the exact business sense of those old

religious terms. 'Slimed with hypocrisy?' Yes, good friends, 'slimed

with hypocrisy.' Have you not known men and women, legions of them,

who shouted their fire-proof Belief, Belief, Belief, their

fire-insurance Belief that was to roof them from rain of fire and act

as an umbrella against the results of their own misdeeds; who

underscored their Bibles, and prayed long and loud, and proclaimed

themselves right, when every day, every act of every day, every

leastermost act of very hour, shouted blasphemous denial of what so

ever is lovely and pure and unselfish and Christlike; whose influence

damned and injured and blighted every life it touched? You must not

blame business men and women for wanting a workable faith, a faith that

will deliver the goods on the job.

CHAPTER XXI