They were up before sunrise following along a rock trail against the
face of a mountain through the morning mists, when they turned a sharp
crag and came suddenly on one of those flower slopes bevelled out of
the forests by snow or ice. The slant sunlight met their faces, and
the mists were lifting in a curtain, with a riffle of wind that ran
through the grasses like the ripple of waves to the touch of unseen
feet. The slope lay literally a field of gold, spikes and umbels of
gold--the gold of yellow midsummer light dyed in the asters and
sunflowers and great flowered gaillardias and golden rod, with an odor
of dried grasses or mint or cloves.
"By George," cried Wayland, "you'd not believe it! Only seven weeks;
look!"
Matthews looked but apparently did not see.
"Don't you see? It's the place where the snow slide slumped down!"
"But where in the name o' conscience is all yon snow; and where's th'
bodies, Wayland?"
"Washed down to the bottom of the Lake Behind the Peak by this time; or
you may find a great rock pile at the foot of the slope."
"A'm thinkin' they'll lie quiet till the crack o' doom, Wayland; but,
but do y' no' see a tent back in yon larches across th' slide, man,
where the thing knocked us both sprawlin'?"
"By George, yes, I do! Wonder if they're homesteading this next? It's
off the N. F."
They put their ponies to an easy lope across the slope and came on a
tepee tent with the flap laced tight and no sign of life, but a horse
lazily floundering up beside a large fallen log, an empty whiskey
bottle on the log, and a man's boot leg protruding from beneath the
tent skirt.
"A'm wonderin' if there's a leg in that boot, Wayland."
"It's the sheriff's horse," said Wayland.
"It is, is it? And this is off y'r Forest Range; an' y'r not
responsible for what A may be tempted to do?"
The old frontiersman literally avalanched off his broncho and made a
dash at the tent flap, frapping it loudly with the flat of his hand.
"Here you--anybody inside?"
No response came from the owner of the leg.
"Here you, waken up." Matthews caught hold of the leg and pulled and
pulled. There was a splutter of snorts, and, 'what in Hell's,' and the
fat girth of an apple-shaped body ripped the tent pegging free and came
out under the tepee skirt followed by another leg, and two oozy hands
flabbily clawing at the grass roots to stop the unusual exit. One hand
held a flat flask and the air became flavored with the second-hand
fumes of a whiskey cask. The sheriff rolled over after the manner of
apple-shaped bodies and sat up on the end of his spine rubbing his
eyes. Then, he recollected the dignity of his office and got groggily
to his feet, steadying himself by clutches at the tent flap. Then, he
emitted a hiccough. "'Scuse m'," he said thickly. "I'm not well, thas
ish not really well! Will one of y' pleash gimme a drink o' water? I
been chasin' those damn-cow-boy-outlawsh seven weeks sclean 'cross
Shate Sline, I'm dead beat out. Thas you, ain't it Wayland? Kindsh o'
you both come after me! Saw y' pash tha' day y' called t' door! Wife
tol' me to hide--not risk m' life, women 're all thas way; skeary;
skeary. Well, I bin out ever shince y' pashed! I nearly got 'em, too!
I caught 'em right in here day after shnow slide had 'em cornered!
Gosh, bullets was pretty thick fur about half-an-hour; bu' I cud'nt
chross Shtate Line." Something in the old frontiersman's widening eyes
and glowering brows stopped the flow of valor; and Sheriff Flood
dragged his exhausted virtue across to the log with some difficulty as
to knees and elbows, got himself turned round and seated.
"Y' been out huntin' them seven weeks?"
"Yes, seven weeks!" His articulation had cleared a little. "Please
gimme m' gun, Wayland!"
"Y' saw them? Y're sure y' saw them?"
"Saw them?" Sheriff Flood laughed in a thin little squeaking laugh.
"Gosh A'mighty, I--I fought--them single handed for a whole half day; I
think I got one! Least ways, there's a powerful smell som'pin dead
comin' up below the Pass Trail. It's too steep to go down to see. I
wish I knew."
"Ye wish ye knew? Ye do--do you? 'Tis a wish bone instead of a back
bone the likes of you have; and it was too steep to see?" Matthews
megaphoned a laugh that echoed loud and long and scornful from the
rocks. "I saw a man who was no sheriff climb both up an' down that
place too steep for the likes o' you to see; and he climbed to do more
than see! 'Twas half an hour y' fought them th' first version? Now
'tis raised to half a day. A'm thinkin' y' be applyin' to th' pension
bureau for a hero's triflin' remembrance! Hoh! An' y' saw us pass did
y'? An' y'r frowsy dyed-haired slattern wife told us y' were away?
An' 't will be a week y' fought 'em when y' tell it again; an' y' been
huntin' them seven weeks lyin' sodden drunk in y'r tent wi' a whiskey
keg from th' cellar o' y'r white-vested friend? Hoh?"
He caught the flabby body by the collar, spinning the dignity of the
law round face down prone upon the log. "A'll not take my fist t' y'
as A wud t' a Man! Ye dastard, drunken, poltroon, coward, whiskey
sodden lout an' scum o' filth, an'," each word was emphasized by the
thud of the empty whiskey bottle wielded as a flail.
"Look out, sir," warned Wayland, rolling from his horse in laughter,
"you'll hurt something, with that bottle."
"Hurt something? N' danger on this wad of fat an' laziness an' lies."
(Thud . . . thump . . . and a double tattoo.) He threw the instrument
of castigation aside and spinning the hulk of flesh and sprawling legs
erect, began applying the sole of his boot. "A'll no take m' fist t'
y' as A wud t' a Man! A'll treat y' as A wud a dirty broth of a brat
of a boy with the flat o' my hand an' sole leather; y' scum, y' runt,
y' hoggish swinish whiskey soak o' bacon an' fat! 'Tis th' likes o'
you are the curse o' this country, y' horse-thief sheriff, y'
bribe-takin' blackguard guardian o' justice an' right! y' coward not
doin' th' crime y' self, but shieldin' them that do."
The sheriff had uttered a splutter of filthy expletives at the first
blow, then a yell; now he was bellowing aloud, chattering with terror,
screaming to be, "let go, let go! I never done you no harm. I'll have
y'r life for this."
"Y' will, will y'? Did y' ask for a drink? Wayland, wait for m' here!"
The Ranger saw the white-haired frontiersman seize one sprawling leg
and the shirt front of the struggling limp thing in his hands. He
heard him plunging down through the tangle of windfall and brush.
There was a bellowing howl and a splash; and Wayland being altogether
human flesh and blood doubled up on the ground with laughter.
"That'll cool him," remarked Matthews coming back very red of face and
sober, "an' it's not deep enough to drown."
He tore open the tent flap and rolled out a small keg. There was a
sound of dregs still rinsing round inside. They could hear the bellows
from the brook. The majesty of the law had evidently crawled out on
the far side.
"He's the kind o' brave man will slap children, an' call a boy a calf,
an' bully timid women, an' knock down little Chinks and dagoes! Oh, A
know his kind o' thunder-barrel bravery, that makes the more noise the
emptier and bigger it is--they're thick as louse ticks under the slimy
side of a dirty board in this world, Wayland; an' they're thick in the
girth an' thicker in the skull." Matthews had taken one of the Forest
axes from the saddle. He left the whiskey keg in kindling wood.
"He's camped dead beat on the State line, all right, Wayland," said the
irate old frontiersman as they mounted their ponies. "He'll have at
least some scars to prove his story, but A'm no thinkin' he'll boast
round showin' them marks o' glory! 'Tis some satisfaction for my
thirst back in the Desert."
"I thought it was about here, on our way out, that a law-loving Briton,
I know, gave me a sermon about exceeding law, taking the law in our own
hands?"
"Hoh!" said the old man.
And the Sheriff's tent was not the only one seen on the way back to the
Ridge. Where the Pass widened to the Valley above the Sheriff's
homestead, they came on a huge miner's tent boarded half way up as for
winter residence, with eight tow-headed half-clad urchins thumb in
mouth staring out from the open mosquito wire door. There was a smell
of onions and frying pork.
"What! a homestead, here, Wayland? D' y'r homesteaders farm on th'
perpendicular, or the level; an' what will they grow on these rocks?"
The Ranger had reined in his pony and was running his glance up the
precipice face for the posts marking the bounds.
"What do they grow? Water-power, I guess! I'm looking for the lines.
The fellow has his posts in for a wire fence; he couldn't get a hundred
and sixty acres on the level; and the posts run up the face, by George
he's blanketed a cool square mile, mostly on the up and down."
"Your territory, Wayland?"
The Ranger had turned looking back up the Pass.
"The trail marks the lower bounds of the N. F., but this fellow's line
runs clear up above the trail. If you bunch this fellow's claim with
the Sheriff's, they've got forty miles of the Pass corked up: no way to
bring the timber above down but by the River; and they've got the
River; and if possession is nine points in the law, they've got our
Forest road besides. We'll have to give that fellow warning and if he
doesn't move, break his fence down."
"Gutt dae." A big burly Swede came forward from the miner's tent.
"Are you one of the new settlers?" asked Wayland.
"Yaw! A gott pig--varm! Tra--vor--years mak' pig money liffin' y'ere!
Mae voman, Ae send her vork citie; Ae build mae house y're!"
"All these children yours?"
"Yaw!" The man smiled bigly, incredulous that any one could doubt.
"Have you filed for a homestead for each of them?"
"Yaw!" The man smiled more pleased than ever, indicating the numerous
olive branches by a wave of his hand. "Gott gutt pig varm! Pat, Pat
Prydges . . . he sae he pay mae voman, one-huntred; mae, two huntred;
mae chil'en . . ." he smiled again, bigly and blandly, "mabbee, five,
ten. Yaw--?"
"One hundred and sixty acres each: twelve hundred acres for the kids,
not one of age, a quarter section to the man!" Then turning back from
Matthews to the foreign settler.
"You've got a thundering big farm?"
"Yaw! Ae mak' a pig yob of itt!"
"By George, I should think you do make a big job of it! This is the
way those two-thousand acres of coal lands were swiped! Are you the
fellow I gave a permit to cut timber up on the Ridge? What did you
change your homestead for?"
The Swede stood smiling showing all his white teeth and wrinkling his
nose and absorbing the meaning of the Ranger's questions into his skull.
"Pat did utt," he said.
"Who? Oh, Bat!" He looked at Matthews. "Do you mind riding back over
the Pass trail; so we can go to the Ridge by the Gully, the way the
outlaws escaped? I want to see where this fellow's upper lines run."
They rode back in silence almost all the way, coming up to the top
shoulder of the precipice where the outlaws had come tumbling down on
Matthews' hiding place a few weeks before. Wayland followed the lines
of the newly planted posts, where the wire had not yet been strung.
"There is not the slightest doubt," he burst out, "this has been done
to force a test case! Well, they'll get it."
"Wayland, is there no way of letting the public know what is going on?
A bet the people of this State don't know!"
"It's against the rule to give out information any more," answered
Wayland.
"Man alive--is this Russia? Y' mind me of Indians in the conjurors'
tent: they tie the medicine man hand and foot and throw him into a
tent; and he's t' make the tent shake. Only the devil-Indians can do
it. They tie y' hand an' foot, then they expect y' to serve the
Nation."
"No," corrected Wayland, "they tie us hand and foot to keep us _from_
serving the Nation."
And the Swede's tent was not the only one they saw, as the reader well
knows. Coming along the Gully on the Ridge crest, Wayland looked for
the pile of illegally-taken saw logs. They were gone. There was
nothing left but a timber skid, and the dry slash and a pile of saw
dust emitting the odor of imprisoned fragrance in the afternoon heat;
but a few yards back from the pile of saw dust stood a tepee tent with
the flap hooked up; and in the opening, a wide-eyed diminutive child
with a very old face and a very small frame, that looked for all the
world to Wayland like a clothes rack in a pawn shop covered with
colored rags.
"Waz ye wantin' me faather?"
As the reader is aware this little person never lacked speech.
"H's away! H's gone t' th' citie for th' throuble that's comin' on
about th' mine, y' onderstand? He's wan o' th' men t' be on hand if
there's throuble."
"Are you one of the new settlers'?"
"Yes, sor! M' name's Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan! We're come upp t'
live three years, mebba four, m' faather says we may fool 'em on less
than five; an' we're goin' to be wal-thy, an' we won't hev' a thing t'
do but sit toight an' whuttle an' sput an'," it was the same story, she
had told Eleanor.
"What trouble in the mines?" asked Wayland.
"In the coal mines, sor! There's a gen'leman come from Waashington,
an' soon as the Ranger's been found, there's been goin's on, sor, bad
goin's ons, soon as th' Ranger's back, their expectin' throuble; un' m'
faather's gone down for to be there, he saz."
"Well?" said Wayland, as they rode on towards the Cabin.
"They've been busy, Wayland! They've been busy, man! You're in the
thick of it! More power t' y'r elbow! We've got the first licks in on
th' sheriff's carcass."
"And six dead men to the good," added Wayland dryly, "only I guess they
don't go into the reports, they are missing!"
As they approached the Cabin, a young man in gray flannels and sailor
hat sat up in the hammock, looked twice at Wayland, got up and came
forward.
"Are you Wayland?" he asked, with a contemptuous glance at the Ranger's
disguised suit.
"That's my name."
The young fellow handed him a letter stamped from the head department
at Washington. It stated that the bearer was a Federal attorney sent
out to investigate the Smelter City Coal Claims and any other matters
bearing on the contests of the Holy Cross. The letter was
couched--Wayland thought--with peculiar frigidity, as though he and not
the coal claimants were the guilty party to an undecided contest. Then
he glanced back at the bearer: an incredibly young and inexperienced
youth--not more than twenty-two or three, barely out of a law school.
"Glad to see you, sir," said Wayland, "Been waiting long?"
The young fellow gave him a side wise look.
"About a week."
"I'm sorry to have delayed you; but one of the most important cases we
have ever had called me away. I had intended to go down to Washington
and explain the whole situation."
The young man smiled very faintly, and was it, contemptuously? "A good
deal needs explaining," he remarked.
"I hope you made yourself at home in the Cabin?"
"On the contrary, I'm with Moyese! I have arranged to have the coal
cases examined this week. The claimants declare the coal is not worth
a farthing, and this case is seriously disturbing the title to the land
where the Smelter stands."
"You're a geologist, of course?" asked Wayland innocently.
"No, I'm from the law department. We considered this more a case of
legality of title than coal values. The Company has kindly consented
to let us examine the mine this week."
"Kindly consented? By George, I like that condescending kindness from
pirates and thieves!"
"But there are two sides to this question, Mr. Ranger: what good does
coal do locked up in the earth? The country wants coal developed."
"Exactly," answered Wayland, "and not stolen and locked up in a great
trust and rings that jack the prices sky-high! The law was passed to
keep these pirates from stealing coal with dummies, to let the
individual who hadn't money to hire dummies go in and develop. If
you'll walk along the Ridge here, you'll see another of the contested
cases. The forests are open to homesteading wherever the land is
agricultural; but you can hardly call land agricultural that's a sheer
drop of 1,000 feet, though the big trees growing on it would each build
a house of six rooms. If you'll walk along, you'll see where the
'dummy' business has begun the same game as in the Bitter Boot."
The young bureaucrat turned short on his heel and strolled down the
Ridge Trail, with an air that only a bureaucrat, a very young
bureaucrat, and a very cheap one could possibly wear.
"Well, A 'm--A 'm d--danged."
Wayland burst out laughing.
"Do you suppose that little kindergarten ass thought he had come and
caught me off duty?"
The old man stood dumfounded. It was such a happy and triumphant
home-coming for a Man on the Job, who had risked his life for seven
successive weeks solely in the cause of Right. Matthews slammed his
hat on the ground, and stamped upon it, and clenched his teeth to keep
in the words that seemed to want to hiss out.
"Man alive. A'd like t' spank him!"
Wayland laughed.
"I guess he's staying with our white-vested friend," he said, as he
pulled the saddles off the animals and gave them a slap heading down to
the drinking trough; but when he turned, Calamity stood in the door of
the Cabin holding out a letter. He forgot to greet her; for the
handwriting was Eleanor's. He tore the envelope open devouring the
words in his eagerness; then his face clouded.
"What in thunder does it all mean? Listen.
'Dear Dick: I don't know when you will come home, but as soon as you
do, you will learn of something abominable that has been published.
I'm going to send Calamity up with this every day so she will be sure
to catch you first thing.' ("It's dated three weeks ago," interjected
Wayland.) 'They have struck at you through me. Don't mind, Dick.
They did it to make you stop. You will not stop, will you? It didn't
hurt me.' (Oh, brave beautiful liar! Does the Angel Gabriel take note
of such lies by women; and which side of the account does he put them
on?) 'Father says a fact is a hard nut to crack. You're not to take
any notice of this attack on me. You're not to flinch from the fight
for my sake or deflect a hair's breadth on my account. You know what
you said. Things have gone so far that crime is invading decent lives.
Well, it has invaded yours and mine; and you're not to slack one jot.
Dick, I command it. I command it in the name of that seal I gave you.'
'E. MacD.'"
"What in thunder does it all mean?" reiterated Wayland.
"What seal is that she speaks of? A'm thinkin' if you'll read that
pile of mail in there on the table, you'll find out."
"Any ansher?" asked Calamity softly, by which, you may guess, dear
reader, that an Indian woman has a heart under her ribs as well as you.
"Wait," said Wayland.
He tore a sheet from his field book. This is what he wrote:
I shall obey you implicitly, my Alder Liefest. I don't know what it is
yet; but I'll not let it make any difference in the fight no matter
what it is. I have thought of that seal every day and night since I
left you, and all day and all night; and I couldn't have pulled through
this trip if I hadn't had that well of memory to drink from. You saved
my life, tho' you don't know it. Matthews will tell you: and you saved
his too.
Dick. (nth.)
P. S. There's a funny little kid up here, been left by her father in
one of the settlers' tents. She's the most pitiable little object I
ever saw. I think her father is a drunken tough from Shanty Town. She
oughtn't to be left up here alone near such a baby-eater as I am. I
wish you'd come up and see about her. If you don't come alone, get
Mrs. Williams, or my friend, Matthews.
Calamity went on down the Ridge and Wayland plunged at his mail. On
the very top of the pile lay a newspaper in a folder marked with red
"Important." Before the pole cat begins operations, he chooses his
target. For myself, I think discretion is better than valor in such a
case, and you would do well to retreat and let the little genus
Mephitis Mephitica infect the air for his own benefit; but Wayland did
not know what was coming and tore the paper open and read. Then he
flung it from him and stood looking with blazing eyes at the thing on
the floor.
"Read it," he said.
The old frontiersman got his glasses laboriously out of the case and
began to read. The sun was behind the Holy Cross, and he stood in the
door to get the light on the paper. When he had finished and looked
round, he saw Wayland sitting crunched forward with his face in his
hands.
"Wayland, man," he slapped him twice on the shoulder, "look up, look up
at that picture on the wall above y'r bed."
Wayland took his hands from his eyes. The Alpine glow struck through
the doorway against the picture on the wall, the picture she had had
Calamity bring down surreptitiously and had sent back framed, the
picture of the face above the Warrior.
"Man alive, why w'd y' care for the devil's dirt and skunk stench and
snake venom, when y' have, when y' have That? She's a--a trump! She's
a thoroughbred! Man, y'd know she had th' blood o' Scottish kings and
queens in her veins. Y'll no go down to-night, Wayland, when y'r all
undone! 'Twould hurt her. A intended tellin' her to-night why A came;
but A'll not now! A'll not now! She must not run from this scandal.
She must face it down before she goes, but A'll go an' see her father
an' come back an' tell y'. Cheer up man! 'Tis part o'the fight."
And for the only time in the struggle, Wayland let go; or rather--his
manhood got from under leash. You can be stoical all right when _you_
get the blow. It's another thing to be stoical when the blow hits what
you love. When the curtain-drop fell on Moyese, it fell on a man
pounding the desk, kicking furniture, eating up the telephone, turning
the air blue. It fell on the Ranger sitting crunched in his chair
gazing through misty eyes at a picture painted by an artist, who was an
idealist. Was he down and out? Was Right the sport of fools?
CHAPTER XXII
A DOWNY-LIPPED YOUTH IN GRAY FLANNELS
I suppose it was owing to the fact that she was woman and he was man
that she spent that first night of the home-coming in dumb hurt wonder
that he had not come immediately to her; and that he passed the night
in restless fevered fury, knowing well that you cannot both control
fire and fan it, fuse metals molten and expect them not to forge, keep
a resolution and break it. She had listened eagerly to the old
frontiersman's account of the adventures on the trail, up the Pass
precipice, crossing the snow slide and in the desert, where the Ranger
had refused to save his own life by abandoning his companion; and the
narrative lost nothing in Matthews' recital with his Scottish-Canadian
R's rolling out sonorous and strong, where he was moved to admiration
or anger. The sheep rancher sat silent through the stirring story with
only an occasional glint of fire from his black eyes gazing aimlessly
at the floor.
"'Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return
to you again.' 'Minds me of what A saw you do for this woman you call
Calamity, in our old Rebellion Days."
Eleanor was sitting on the arm of her father's leather chair. The
sheepman glanced up warningly, but Matthews was going ahead full steam.
"We're both older than we were in those days, MacDonald, older an'
wiser, an' for m'self, A should add, a good bit steadier! You, y' were
always a sober-faced secret lad, MacDonald; an' till yon day in front
o' th' Agency house, A don't think, A hardly think, we men knew what a
devil was in y'! A can see y' yet as y' kicked th' gun out o' yon
blackguard's hand an' let him take the load o' buckshot square between
th' shoulders! 'Twas a handsome thing o' you to take th' poor buddy in
an' give her a shelter! How does she come to call herself Calamity?"
MacDonald's foot came down on the floor with a clamp, and he rose.
"She didn't. 'Twas the miners in the Black Hills. She used to bring
in so many hard-luck chaps, shot up by the Sioux, bring 'em in on her
shoulders from the hills to the camp, that the boys got to calling her
Calamity. She had lost her good looks, and--" MacDonald shot a glance
of warning in the direction of his daughter--"and the same old story, I
guess; she was off the market! One of my trips to the mining camps up
state, I found her in a mess of rags picking crusts out of the garbage
barrels along a back lane! I brought her back with me. Gave her a
week's soak in the bath house--" he paused as if reflecting, "and that
it seems was foundation enough for the hog-wash that appeared in one of
the papers here. Suppose we take a walk as we discuss old days; they
were pretty wild days for discussion before a girl, who didn't know her
dad before she was born."
And Eleanor went out on the Ranch House piazza off her room, while the
two frontiersmen strolled down the river. How different her outlook on
life was from two months before when reference to Calamity had called
up mingled fury and horror. Now that she understood, anything in this
Western Country might be possible, and understandable, and explainable.
She had his hurried pencil note where she could feel it, under her
locket; only the locket was outside above; and the fly leaf of that
field book was inside next. "Dick (nth)," he had signed himself; and
he had not come down. She could see the dark shadowy Ridge from her
piazza chair, and hear the subdued laughter and lipping of the waters,
and he was there--not a half hour's walk away--and he had not come.
There was a full moon. She could see its silver sheen on the River, on
the tremulous poplar leaves, sifting through the pine needles and in
opal wings round the far luminous cross of snow on the mountain. The
night hawks and the swallows dipped and darted and cut the air with
humming wings; and once the wire gate squeaked to some one entering.
Eleanor sprang up with her heart beating so that she could not speak;
but it was only a white hatted youth in light gray flannels asking
Calamity at the basement door "when MacDonald would be back." Did
Eleanor imagine it; or did the citified young person in the gray
flannels with the red necktie look up towards her hesitatingly, with
the suggestion of an ingratiating smile in the pale blue eyes, a
suggestion which she could not define but which somehow infuriated her?
Poor pale anaemic youth! He was not used to having his waiting smiles
met by the blaze of red fury that flashed to her eyes.
"Calamity, if that person wants anything, tell him to go out to the
bunkhouse and see the foreman."
Then, she sank back in her chair both glad and sorry in one breath that
Wayland had not been there. She shut her eyes to drink again of the
memories that had sustained her all these weeks; and felt the lift and
fall of the note his hand had written, pulsing to the rhythm of her
breathing; but the memories failed her. Memories were for absence; and
he was here; and he had _not_ come. If only he would come now, how she
would greet him, holding him unflinchingly to his resolution, of
course, and of course; but as a kind of second thought in the back of
her head, the under motive beneath all the clamor of light upper notes,
she knew to the inmost core of her being that she was wishing he would
come now because her father was out and she was alone and could greet
him as flesh and spirit, heart and mind, cried out to greet him; to
touch him; to spend themselves upon him in a fierce proud abandon of
love and gladness; to give and take, and give and take again, till,
till--what? Was this the way to keep him standing strong to his
resolutions?
And shall we blame her? Does the beautiful thing we call life spring
from postulates and rules and mathematics; or from the spirit's altar
fires? And I confess I never see the thing we call vice but I wonder
did it not spring from the burning of the refuse heap, which poor
humans have mistaken for altar fires?
She heard her father come in late, slamming the mosquito door behind
him, and pass across the dark living room to his own chamber without
saying good night. Once, she thought she saw a white sailor hat
through the cottonwood hovering along the road. Then, as she looked,
the white sailor seemed accompanied by a panama; and she crept into her
room with fevered hands and heavy heart, snacking the mosquito door
behind her. There was the companion bang of a door being hooked below,
old Calamity keeping watch as usual and only turning in, when she heard
Eleanor going to bed. Eleanor waited till all was quiet. Then, she
drew the burlap portiere across the mosquito door, and lighted her
candle, and began writing,--writing what? Was it some dildo of
oriental song she had read in Europe; was it the burden of some Indian
chant stirring vaguely in her unconscious blood; or was it but the
simple love cry of primitive Woman, of that woman who wandered round
about the streets of Jerusalem calling her lover? "My flesh cries out
to touch you, my beloved," she wrote; "my hands are hungry to touch
you, and my spirit is hungrier than my hands. When you were absent, I
drank of memories; but now, you are back, the shadow waters have gone;
I must have the living. If I could see you but once, I know this wild
longing would lie down and be quiet." She stopped writing. Would it?
Would it lie down and be quiet with just a look? A look would be a
deep drink of living waters, she knew that; but would it, would it lie
down and be quiet? She didn't intend ever to stop loving him. As long
as she loved him, and stayed where love could grow by what it fed on,
would it lie quiet? Was this keeping him strong to his resolution?
She tore the paper to tiny atoms and burned the scraps bit by bit on
her metal paper knife above the candle. Then, she blew out the candle
and drew his soiled field-book leaf from her breast. She fell asleep
with her head on her arm, and her lips pressed to that fool-thing he
had signed at the bottom of his note, "Dick (the nth)," whatever that
meant.
There was no mistaking it next morning at breakfast. She felt strung
and upset; and her father looked at her strangely; and Matthews was so
keen on covering the general embarrassment that he aimed too far in the
other direction, rattling off such a fusilade of Western stories that
they sounded hollow. She forgot her own confusion studying the two
men. How stooped her father looked! He looked, what was it? Like a
man who has waited a long time for something to come, and when it has
come, found himself too sad to seize it. His eyes looked as if he had
not slept; and Eleanor now observed that the frontiersman's sun-burned
nose had a suspicious shine at the end. If she had not been undone
from her own bad night, she would have helped their efforts to cover
embarrassment; but now a horrible thought came; a thought born of the
low innuendo in the scandal story; and the thought finished her. She
felt her self-control going and rose and fled round the end of the
table to her room. The old frontiersman stopped mid-way in his story
of the brats of Blackfoot boys stealing every stitch of his clothing
one day he was bathing in Lower Saskatchewan. Her father jumped to his
feet and threw out one arm to stop her. That finished Eleanor. He had
never done such a thing before. The only time he had ever shown
affection was that night when she had read the scandal in the paper and
he had reached up his hand and taken hers. Now, he held her in his
arms, bowed, broken, unspeaking. The tears came in a rain. She did
not hide her face after the manner of tenderly nurtured shrinking
women. She faced him with wide open lashes and brimming eyes and
burning defiance.
"Father, you don't doubt me, too, do you?"
"Doubt you? My God no, child! It's only I never knew how much I loved
you till I realized I might have to part with you."
How strange and non-understanding and non-understandable these men
creatures were! Eleanor looked at him; and looked at him. Then she
threw her arms round his neck and kissed the dark sad silent face with
a frightened tender fervor; and do not laugh, dear reader; for it is
only on the stage that the graceful altogether elegant curtain-drop
comes; but the old frontiersman had somehow got himself outside the
screen door, and immediately on that kiss came through the mosquito
wire such a thunder clap of pulpit artillery as is the peculiar
prerogative of some large gentlemen when they blow their nose.
MacDonald and Eleanor both burst out laughing; and Eleanor noticed it
was a large red cotton one, two for ten they sold in Smelter City.
And all the while, Wayland sat crunched in the chair of the Cabin,
gazing and gazing at the face in the picture above "the Happy Warrior,"
till the light faded from the Holy Cross and the moon beams struck
aslant the timbered floor, and Calamity's shadow stood in the doorway
with a basket on her arm.
"Meesis Villiam send up y' supper," she said.
Wayland ate mechanically. He did not know that he was bursting out
with angry words all through the meal.
"To think, they'd stoop, they'd dare to splash their filth and hog-wash
on her skirts, to hurt me? Well, they've got me, Calamity? They've
got me, old girl! But they've got me in a way they don't expect! You
Indians knew the courts were a fraud and lie. They'd have cleared this
kind of blackguardism up with a knife. Well--so will I; but it will be
another kind of knife. You can't out-Herod a skunk; but you can bury
it, Calamity, eh, old girl? We'll bury 'em so deep next election,
they'll never see daylight: then we'll pile this pack of exposure on
'em so high they'll never get up again. We're out for scalps,
Calamity! No more fighting in the open, eh? We'll spring it on 'em
the way you Indians put a knife in a man's back."
"Iss it Moy-eese, heem keel little boy?" asked Calamity softly.
Something in the soft hiss of the words made the Ranger turn. There
was a mad look in the glint of the black eyes, and the hands were
kneading nervously in and out of the palms.
"Yes, damn him, it is Moyese, who is at the bottom of all this
deviltry; but don't you worry, Calamity! We're going to get his scalp!"
He paced the Ridge half the night planning his campaign. He would go
first thing in the morning and get that child's story of the mine and
the "dummy" entryman. Then, he would get that Swede's affidavit before
the thick-tow-head realized what he was after. Then, he would get a
trained geologist for the examination of the mine, not that flannelled
kindergartner, stuck full of bureaucratic self importance as he was of
ignorance. Then, he would surprise them by doing absolutely nothing
till election time, then "plunk" it all on them through the opposition
paper, and stand back, and take his dismissal! Oh, his midnight
thoughts raced, as yours and mine have raced, when we have been struck
by sorrow, or blackmail, or motiveless malice! He could not make sure
of it; but once as he paced near the Ridge trail he thought he
saw . . . was it a form in flannels accompanied by a figure resembling
Bat's sauntering slowly down to the Valley?
When Wayland dwelt a moment on what such a conjunction of observers
might mean, his thoughts jumped. Could Brydges have done it? Back in
the Cabin, the face in the picture seemed sentient and shining in the
gloom. It was an absurd notion, of course; for the picture was a
shadowy thing in dark sepia; and there was no light but the silver
reflection of the moon from the Holy Cross. The Holy Cross,--what was
it she had said? Nothing worth while ever won without someone being
crucified? How absurdly small, how remotely contemptibly impossible,
the scandal thing seemed anyway, as though a skunk could obstruct the
avalanche of the massed snow flakes by sending up his malodorous stench
across the path of the Law! And he loved her and he had her love, and
he had known the highest blessedness of life, and nothing could take
the consciousness of it from him! Wayland went to sleep dreaming
fool-things about the face in the picture. Of course, you never
dreamed them, sleeping or waking. At break of day, he picked a sprig
of mountain flower, and did certain things to that framed picture, and
rode away to his day's work.
"Let's go up and see that little runt of an Irish lassie," Matthews had
suggested in the afternoon; and they were leisurely climbing the Ridge
Trail, the old frontiersman yarning and yarning of the dear good old
days; Eleanor thinking her own thoughts. They met a downy-lipped youth
in gray flannels and Mr. Bat Brydges wearing a panama hat and an
"Oh-I-know-it-all" air. Both dabbed at their hats to the old man; but
Matthews saw them not till they had passed when he stopped and turned
with a look over his shoulder and a grunt. Eleanor had not learned yet
what had happened to the Sheriff; but somehow the old frontiersman's
look gave her a satisfaction. Where a crag jutted out from the face of
the Ridge and some spruce saplings spanned a spring trickling down from
the rocks, Matthews stopped. This was the place! Old rascal! How did
he know? Has age ever been young? Eleanor did not know that he was
looking at her, did not know that her face was wrapped in mystery and
light. Suddenly he placed both hands on her shoulder.
"Eleanor, y'r a magnificent woman! Y' don't mind me callin' y' a
woman?"
It was his highest compliment.
"Y're braver than my wife; an' she's the bravest o' them a'! D' y'
know that my wife came half way round the world t' marry me an' go
penniless to th' Indian Reserve? D' y' know when she found the Indians
sick, d' y' know she went East an' took a full four years' medical
course t' be able to attend them? D' y' know she goes all over the
Reserve day an' night an' for three hundred miles among th' settlers to
attend th' sick? But duty with us is easy. We're rich. Duty brought
us together! Duty's goin' t' push y' apart; an' y're not complainin'."
Eleanor could not answer. What was there to say? They went on up the
Ridge Trail, Matthews still talking to let her think her own thoughts.
There was the story of the last great buffalo hunt at Battleford; of
his first buffalo hunt when he had broken away from the other hunters
in his early boyhood days and the buffalo bull had got him down in a
crack of the earth under its feet. And there was the story of his
first Synod Meeting, "when A came all wild an' woolley out o' the West!
My five brithers were there; they were a' preachers! One is the
bishop! Oh, A guess they were on needles an' pins for fear o' what A'd
do! A'd been in the West so long, A didn't know enough not to go
shirtsleeves down the streets o' Montreal! Well, been a hot day!
'Twas an evenin' meetin'! All the missionaries to th' Indians were
givin' experiences. One got up an' he wanted th' _dear sisters_ to
raise a little money to build a fence; a fence, y' understand? An'
another got up an' wanted th' _dear sisters_ t' have a sewin' bee,
gossip buzz, A call 'em, to raise a little money for the Lord t' build
a school. Losh! A stood it long as A could! Then A jumped up! 'Twas
a hot night, an' A'd ripped off m' coat! A'm no sure my collar hadn't
slumped t' a jelly, too! Says I, 'If y'r reverences will excuse a
plain Western man speakin' plain Western speech, A want t' say A don't
like t' hear strong well able-bodied men whinin' an' beggin' th' _dear
sisters_ t' help them.' Says I, 'If th' brothers will just peel off
their coats an' build their own fences, they'll find the Lord 'ull help
them without any whinin' an' beggin'! Peel off y' coats, an' y'r dude
duds,' says I, 'an' go t' work, an' don't insult God Almighty an'
disgust the women folk wi' that milk-sop bottle-baby rubber-ring talk.'"
"What did the meeting say?" asked Eleanor, surprised out of herself.
"Oh, A dunno that they said much at all! They kind o' stomped, tho'."
CHAPTER XXIII
IT AIN'T THE TRUTH I'M TELLIN' YOU: IT'S ONLY WHAT I'VE HEERD
They were opposite the Cabin. Now, by all the tricks of stage-craft
and story-craft, the Ranger should have been standing posed in the
doorway; but he wasn't. So different is fact from fiction--so much
harder, always; so brutally inconsiderate of our desires; so much more
surprisingly beautiful than we can desire. The door stood open and
empty.
"Wait! A want to leave a note," said Matthews.
"May I look in and see what bachelor confusion is like?" asked Eleanor.
She wanted to see if he had noticed the framed picture. Noticed--bless
you? The thing hung skugee on its nail; and there was a sprig of
mountain everlasting stuck in the wire; and Eleanor would really have
liked to see whether the glass above that picture were blurred. She
leaned over the couch examining it while Matthews wrote a note; and she
went hurriedly out of the door hot of face and happy.
The old man's note read: _We're going along to the Ridge to see that
little Irish runt. If you chance back, will you happen along to see
the old man. I'll keep her till six._
"It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y': it's ownly what I've heerd."
Meestress Lizzie O'Finnigan stood in the opening of the tent flap, a
lonely little face, a lonely little figure in her tawdry rags, a lonely
little soul in the great lone Forest, like a little mite lost in the
big universe, Eleanor thought. She was telling them about the
"Throuble expected at th' moine; an' faather bein' on hand t' take a
fist; an' th' gen'leman from Waashin'ton waitin' for the Ranger man t'
come back; an' th' goin's on raported in the paphers. Ah, h' waz a
baad man, wuz the Ranger, faather said."
"Do _you_ read the paper, little one?" broke in Matthews.
"_Nut_ the print, sor, but I do th' pitchers; an' th' murthers; an'
thim's all pitchered out plain so I can read! Faather sez he wun't
have his independence proposed upon; if th' don't give him twinty
thousan' fur settin' toight here, he'll peach; but about th' mine, th'
Ranger man iz expected t' make throuble, an' faather iz all powerful
quick with his fist, sor, 'specially when he's in drink; an' he's t' be
on hand. It ain't th' truth I'm tellin' y', sor; it's ownly what I've
heerd."
"And if you sit tight here for five years, you are going to be
wealthy?" asked Eleanor, taking her by the hand and leading her out to
the woods.
The unwonted act almost startled the little face. She looked up at
Eleanor questioningly. "Y's, mam, waal-thy," she said. "Faather sez
when we're waal-thy, he'll be a gen'leman an' Oil be a loidy."
"All you need, to be a lady, or a gentleman is, to be wealthy? Is that
it?" asked the old frontiersman laughing.
"Yes, sor," said the child solemnly, "Faather wull shure be a
gen'leman."
"Do you like living here?" asked Eleanor.
"No, mam, I don't think much of it! In Smelter City, there wuz
curcuses; an' elephants on _all_ the bills of fare; an' loidies dancin'
on th'r heads! Faather sez if I keep on dancin' as foine as I do now,
mebbie I'll be able t' dance on m' head; but I wouldn't like to dance
without any skeerts, wud y'?"
"No, A wouldn't," answered the preacher quickly; and Eleanor laughed.
It was all so ludicrously pathetic. They asked her if she would not
like to come down with them to the Indian School; and she looked
wistfully and did not answer. Oh, God of Little Children, where are
You? Are the Lambs outside the fold not Yours also?
When they pointed out the creatures of the woods to her, they found she
did not know a squirrel from a chipmunk; and she pronounced the merry
chattering "odjus." When a cat bird came tittering on his tail,
squeaking out every imaginary note of gladness and the frontiersman
explained that this fellow sang only _after_ his family had been raised
whereas the other birds sang _before_, she said he "wazn't as
interestin' as th' elephants on the bill o' fare."
"Let's see! There's three trails here about!" Matthews was cogitating
with his gaze on Eleanor. "There's the one across to the Upper Mesas;
an' there's one back behind over th' shoulder of the Holy Cross down to
the Lake Behind the Peak; an' there ought to be one between, runnin' up
to the snows! Think y'r good for climbin' over this windfall while A
carry this little puss on m' shoulder? Steer for the snow ahead!
Don't mind my laggin' back! Go on ahead an' wait for us! A'm goin' t'
see if A can't mine down to some gold beneath th' slime o' th' slums!
It's not in the course o' nature that any child should be blind t' this
world, Miss Eleanor, if A can open th' doors for her! Go ahead; an' if
y' find a good sittin' down place, just rest quiet an' wait for us an'
don't worry if we're long comin'! If A can't make her love God's big
play ground, A'm no preacher!"
Eleanor laughed. Her last mining down to veins of gold had not been a
particular success. She looked back at the two; the massive thewed
frontiersman with the shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and almost
boyish eyes; the little tawdry bundle of rags on his shoulder, with the
black hollow eyes full of nameless fear and nameless knowledge, and the
little old hard mouth with a dreadful tense sadness about the droop.
She heard the big genial voice with the roll of Scotch-Canadian
drawling out its r's, and the child's thin "Yes, Sor, m' Faather;" then
the child burst into a joyous laugh. Eleanor wondered what he could
have said to elicit that laugh. When she glanced back, the old
frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a
branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk's nest. Even as Eleanor
looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the tree with
another joyous laugh.
Then, with that spirit of the child, which possesses us all when we
give ourselves to the genii of the woods, Eleanor was following the
long lanes of light between the giant spruces--the long lanes of light
that lead on and on and on, ahead of you; out over the edge of the
world into the realms of dreams and holiday and joy, where there is no
Greed, and there is no Lust, and there is no nagging Care, and there is
no Motiveless Malice spoiling things. She looked up. The gray green
moss hung festooned from branch to branch; and the light sifted down a
tempered rain of gold; and all the shiny evergreens shook gypsy
castanets of joy to the riffling wind. She listened. The voices
behind had faded away; and the air was vibrant of voiceless voices, of
pixy tambourines beating the silence. There was a hush, the sibilant
hush of waters rushing down from the far snows of the Holy Cross; and a
flutter--the flutter of all the little leaves clapping their hands; and
a big voiceless voice of solemn undertone--the diapason of the pines
harping the age-old melodies to the touch of the wind's invisible
hands, melodies of the soul of the sea in the heart of the tree, of
strength and power and eternity. As she listened, she could fancy some
vast oratorio voicing the themes of humanity and the universe and God.
Then all the little people of the woods came peeping through the
greenery surveying her, weighing her, examining her, testing her spirit
of good or ill. A little squirrel went scampering up one huge tree
trunk and down another, just a pace ahead, scouting for the other
pixies of the woods, till with a scurr-r-r and chitter--chipper--ee, he
whisked back in his tracks. "She's all right, people," he said. Then
a whisky jack flitted from branch to branch of the under brush--always
just a step ahead, not saying as much as was his custom, but peeking a
deal with head cocked from side to side. "No," said Eleanor, "I have
no camp crumbs: you go back." The little red crested cross bill
twittered in front of her from spray to spray of the purple fire weed
and fern fronds; then, concluded that she was only a part of this out
door world, anyway, and went back about his business on the trail
behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves
that she couldn't localize--water ouzel in moss covert, or hawk babies
in hiding, or--or what? She couldn't descry. Then, suddenly, with a
hiss--ss and swear plain as a bird could swear, a little male grouse
came sprinting down the trail to stop her, ruff up, tail spread to a
fan, wings down, screaming at her in bad words "to stop! to stop! or
he'd pick her eyes out!" Eleanor naturally stopped. There was a
rustle and a flump; and a mother grouse whirred up with her brood--a
dozen of them Eleanor counted, was it a second family? babies just in
feather, clumsy and heavy of wing; and the little man ducked to hiding
among the dead leaves. Eleanor peered everywhere. There was not the
glint of an eye to betray hiding. She laughed and looked back for
Matthews and his little pupil. A turn of the lane shut off all view;
and again, she had that curious sensation of a vague movement back
among the evergreens. She glanced forward. The light was shut off by
a huge pile of windfall giant tree on tree, moss grown, with cypress
and alder shoots from the great, broad dead trunks, a pile the height
of a house. Passage round the ends of the up-rooted trunks led back
through the brushwood. Eleanor stepped to the lowest trunk and began
climbing over the pile by ascending first one trunk, then back up
another. Almost on the top, she paused. It was that same vague
rustling movement, too noiseless to be a noise, too evanescent for a
sound. She parted the screen of shrubbery growing from the prone
trunks and peered forward.
The same lanes of gold-sifted light leading over the edge of the world
through the aisled evergreens, but at the end a glint as of emerald,
the sheen of water with the metal glister of green enamel, water
marbled like onyx or malachite, with the reflection of a snow cross and
dun gray shadows--shadows of deer standing motionless at the opening of
the aisled trees--come out from the forest at sundown to their drinking
place. Lane of light? It had been a lane of delight; and that was
what all life might be but for the Satyr shadows lurking along the
trail. There were two or three little fawns, just turning from ash
coat to ochre gray, nuzzling and wasting the water; and one of the year
old deer had turned its head and was sniffing the air looking back, a
poetry of motionless motion, all senses poised. Eleanor held her
breath. If only the other two would come: yet she had put back her
hand to warn them if they should come; and stood so, looking and
listening. She remembered afterwards by the nodding of the blue bells
she had known that the wind was away from the deer to her. There was a
quick step on the lowest log. She stretched back her hand to signal
quiet. The quick noiseless step came up the logs like a stair--winged
feet. She turned to see what effect this fairy scene would have on the
little denizen of the slums.
It wasn't the frontiersman at all. It was the Ranger; and she had let
the screen of branches spring back with a snap; and the deer had leaped
in mid-air, vanishing phantoms; and her hands had met his half way; and
his eyes were shining with a light that blinded her presence of mind.
Then, he had drawn her to himself; and afterwards, when she had tried
to live it over again, she realized that she had lost count.
Shall we let the curtain drop, dear reader? For you must remember you
are looking upon two sensible young people, who have resolved to keep
each other strong to their resolutions. He had planned exactly how he
would conduct himself when this meeting came; guarded, very guarded, so
guarded she must know he was keeping a grip for both. And she had
known exactly what she would do when he came: she would be frank,
perfectly frank and open; for had they not both taken the resolution?
And when she came to herself, it was as that night at the Death
Watch--her face thrown back and he was kissing the pulsing veins of her
throat, saying in a voice between a breath and a whisper--"When one has
ached in the Desert for seven weeks, one is pretty thirsty."
"Let me go, dear! This wild happiness is a kind of madness."
"Give me all you have for me in but one more!" He bent over her face;
when he released her, she was faint.
He offered her hand-hold down over the tree trunks to the lake; and
when their feet touched solid earth again, took a grip of the situation
to relieve her embarrassment and began talking furiously of the Desert
ride and the dream face that had twice saved his life. Eleanor stopped
stock still.
"Why, _that_ was my dream," she explained; and their hands met half way
and before she had finished telling, it had happened all over again.
They were standing on the margin of the lake. The sun was behind the
peak, and the wine glow lay on the snow cross, and the topaz gate was
ajar again to the new infinite life, and I think they were both a
little bit afraid. An old world poet has said something about fools
rushing in where angels fear to tread. The mountaineer expresses the
same thought in his own more picturesque and I think more poetic
vernacular, certainly it is a vernacular _next_ to life rather than
books. It is an axiom that "only the most blatant tenderfoot, the most
tumble-footed greenhorn, will monkey on the edge of a precipice."
The marbled water shadows deepened to fire in the Alpine after glow;
and the little waves of the lake came lipping and lisping and laving at
their feet.
"There is no use trying to tell about it or talk it out," burst out
Wayland.
"Don't," said Eleanor. "Mr. Matthews told us much last night: and I'll
dig the rest out of him the next time I see him."
"I'm not talking of the Desert. I'm talking of you. It's so
God-blessed beautiful, Eleanor! I used to think and think in the
Desert what this would be like; and it's so much more beautiful than
one could hope or guess. Don't you think there must be something in
God and Heaven and all that? Love is so much more beautiful than a
fellow could possibly think?"
"Don't you think they'll be wondering about us?" asked Eleanor.
"Pooh, no! Matthews told me to come on here and find you! He's just
back there a little way."
"Did he plan this?"
"Course! How do you suppose I knew where to find you? You see now why
I must not see you, if we are to keep our resolutions?"
"Yes, I see! Let us go back."
It was on the lake side of the logs that Wayland paused.
"I don't _think_ they could see through those logs?" he said.
Eleanor burst into a peal of laughter and ascended the fallen trunks as
if they had been stairs.
They came on the other two sitting squat in the middle of the trail;
and if the windfall had been opaque, one of the two wore an expression
on his face as if he had guessed. He was tossing a handful of little
pebbles up from his palm and catching them on the backs of his knuckles.
"We didn't make much o' the woods an' birds," he remarked with a
twisted smile, "but man alive, we can play jacks!"
Don't smile, self superior reader! It takes some little time to
manufacture a snow slide out of snow flakes; and it may be the law that
it also takes some little time to manufacture a soul out of slime.
Passing the Cabin, they again encountered a downy-lipped youth in gray
flannels accompanied by a fat gentleman with tortoise-shell eyes and a
tallow smile; but the jaunty dimples of the fat man, the supercilious
lift of the gray flannel's eyebrow--froze mid-way at sight of Meestress
Leezie O'Finnigan, who bowed to Bat with the gravity of a mother
superior.
"It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y'": Lizzie was loquaciously going over
the story for the twentieth time, "It ain't the truth I'm tellin' y',
y' onderstand; it's ownly what I've heerd."
The Ranger dropped out of the group at the Cabin.
Bat stood bellicosely scowling at the three figures receding down the
Ridge Trail.
"What in Hell is that old parson doing with that Shanty Town kid? He'd
better keep his oar out of this."
"It's a free country," said Wayland dryly. "Can I do anything for you?"
"We came up to notify you that the mine will be examined to-morrow,"
announced the downy lips.
CHAPTER XXIV
I AM UNCLE SAM
"So they would examine the mine to-morrow? So they had sprung the
examination of the coal veins before he could obtain a Government
Geologist, and the coal would be pronounced worthless, as the coal
involved in the Alaska cases was pronounced worthless by another
kindergartner when that contest was impending. Then, they would argue
and consider and send up briefs and send down decisions on the value of
the coal till the statutory time had expired and the law of limitations
would bar suit for restitution. Meanwhile, Smelter City Coking Company
were using half-a-million tons a year, and sending away as much again;
but on the word of an ignorant bureaucratic cub, the coal was to be
worthless and the brazen steal of public property to be sanctioned by
law. How much mineral land had been stolen in the very same way in the
last ten years, first homesteaded by 'the dummy' foreigner, then for
five, ten, one-hundred, two-hundred at most three-hundred dollars a
quarter section on false affidavit as to entry, length of residence,
age of homesteader, turned over to the Ring, whose sworn valuation of
the coal ran from $20,000 to $40,000 an acre?" Personally, Wayland,
as he thought it over, knew of fifty-thousand acres of coal so
stolen in Colorado and as much again in Wyoming; not to mention
three-hundred-thousand acres of gold and silver lands looted in the
South-West.
_And the looters were the party shouting at the top of their voices
about "vested rights" and "attacks on property" and "demagoguery
producing national hysteria." Where was the respect due "the vested
rights" belonging to Uncle Sam? What about the piracy and plunder of
the property belonging to Uncle Sam? Why was it valor to throw a
burglar looting your house out by the neck, and "hysteria" to go after
a burglar looting Uncle Sam?_
Wayland had once asked Bat Brydges these questions. Bat had looked
pained at the Ranger's obtuseness.
"Wayland," he had exclaimed, "who is Uncle Sam? I am Uncle Sam! You
are Uncle Sam! We are all Uncle Sam! That's the beauty of democracy!
This property you are howling about is yours and mine; and when we go
in and develop it, we are only taking what is our own."
"What about the fellow who isn't in on a share?"
"Share? Quit talking Socialism," Bat had commanded with a grand
gesture, leaving Wayland wondering _who_ were the real Socialists in
the Nation.
It came to him as he watched the panama hat and the white sailor going
down the Ridge Trail that you can't argufy national problems; nor
compromise on them; nor enter on any treaty of peace but the peace that
is a victory. Brydges was Uncle Sam; and he thought one way. The
Ranger was Uncle Sam; and he thought another way. One was fighting for
the vested rights of the few. The other was fighting for the vested
rights of the many. It would have to be fought out, the fight would
have to come; and this coal case, like the Range War, was one of the
preliminary skirmishes to the Great National Contest. Would the
people, who were paying fifty cents, a dollar, a dollar-and-a-half
extra for every ton of coal bought, because the coal areas were being
brought under the domination of one Ring, understand and waken up and
rally to the fight? Or was it as Moyese had declared with the most
open and genial cynicism that "the public did not give one damn"?
The Ranger crossed over to the telephone and called up the MacDonald
Ranch.
"That you, Mr. MacDonald? Matthews back yet? Oh, gone across to the
Mission School? No, nothing wrong: better not pay any attention to the
little Irish kid's babble of trouble at the mine! They'd hardly dare
that! Yes, I know they did on the Rim Rocks; but that was daring only
you and Williams: this would be daring the great Government of the
greatest Nation in the world! Oh, that doesn't bother me! The point
is--they haven't given me time to get a Government expert up here; and
this fellow is evidently a toady for Moyese. I want an extra witness
on the quality of that coal: want a witness to prove it's being used
and shipped and sold. Oh, no, not both of you, one will do, either you
or Matthews! All right; will you go down by the early stage? Better
not go down with me! I'm going to set out now; ride down the Forest
Service trail, camp in the woods and expect to reach Smelter City about
ten in the morning. If you leave by the six o'clock morning stage,
that will be plenty of time. All right, either one of you! Much
obliged! Good-by!"
An hour from the time Eleanor had left him, the Ranger was on his
horse. He did not go down the Ridge Trail. He followed the National
Forest Trail along the edge of the Ridge away from the Holy Cross Peak,
down the forested back of a long foot-hill sloping and flanking the
Valley almost to Smelter City. Locally, the sloping hill was known as
"a hog's back"; and it was where the hog's back poked its nose into the
Valley far below, that the tangle had occurred between the Forest
Service and the Smelter Ring. Mining was permitted in the National
Forests, of course; but the mining areas must be obtained according to
law, and paid for, and operated individually, not homesteaded by the
"dummies," then turned into a consolidated ring of coal owners. What
made this violation of law more flagrant than usual was the fact that
these homesteaded coal lands lay at an angle of almost ninety degrees
in a sheer wall; and it was an impossibility for any homesteader ever
to have put in residence on them. Homestead entry, term of residence,
proof and title, all exhibited fraud on the face of the records; and
there wasn't a man in the Government Service who did not know that.
What unseen hand had juggled entries, title and proof through? The
homesteaders had sold out long ago for a song, some for as little as
ten dollars a hundred and sixty acres. The Ring had possession; and as
every man in the Land Service knew, the Government had pigeon-holed all
recommendations for legal action to compel restitution. Would the
wheels of justice rest inert? Would the presiding deity of justice be
so blind, if some poor man, a poor man, who was also Uncle Sam, stole a
ton of coal from the Ring operating these mines? Why was it possible
to steal ninety-million dollars' worth of coal from the people, and not
permissible for one of the people to steal one ton of coal from the
Ring? These were the questions Wayland asked himself as he rode down
the hog's back for Smelter City.
The trail down the hog's back sloped gradually and cut fifteen miles
off the distance to Smelter City by the Valley Road. It was "the show"
trail of all the National Forests. When supervisors came to inspect,
or visitors from the East who wanted to give accounts of having roughed
it without losing an hour of sleep or carrying any scars of stump beds,
or when Congressional committees came from Washington for a champagne
junket to report on all they hadn't seen--Wayland always conducted them
down the hog's back trail that ran along the backbone of the Holy Cross
lower slope. He had built the trail, himself; much of it, with his own
hands; cut in the side of the forest mould and rock with an outer log
as guard rail; wide enough for two horses abreast and zig-zagging
enough to break the descent into a gradual drop and afford new vistas
at each turn, of the Valley below, of the Mesas above the Rim Rocks
across, and of the River looping and sweeping down to Smelter City.
He used to dream, as he rode down the bridle path, of the day coming
when all the vast domain of National Forests would be like that trail;
not a stick of underbrush or slash as big as your finger; not a stump
above eighteen inches high; all the scaled logs piled neat as card
board boxes; open park below the resinous cinnamon-smelling lodge-pole
line and englemann spruce, hardly a branch lower on the trees than the
height of a man; and such a rain of tempered light from the clicking
pine needles and whorled spruces as might have come through the rose
window of a cathedral. A "show" picture of a properly conducted
National Forest has gone through all the magazines and newspapers--It
represents the piles of cordwood clean as piles of pencils, the trees
standing park-like with vistas and glades and opens beneath the tall
pinery. Wayland knew in his own heart that his Forest was better than
that "show" picture. No pictures could tell of the pine seedlings
stolen from a squirrel _cache_ scattered on the snows; the delicate
young pinery coming up among a protecting nursery of birch and poplar
and cottonwood. No picture could show "the dead tops" cut out; the
"cheesy" rotten heartwood burning on an altar of sacrifice to the deity
of the forest; the markings on "the dead tops" and ripe trees and trees
with broken top "leaders" for the lumberman to come and harvest. No
picture could give the jolly song of the cross-cut saw, the musical
ripping of the oiled blade through the huge logs, the odor of the
imprisoned sunbeams and flowers from the rain of the yellow saw-dust.
No picture could possibly tell you the life story of yon big tree, the
warrior of the woods who had beaten down all competitors and enemies
and wore his purple cones like the tasseled honor badges of a soldier,
with pendulous moving, plumy arms: yet to the eye of the Forester, the
life history was there, in the fluted grooved columnar bark, in the
knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk
towering above its fellows for light and air, in the wood rings, where
a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this noble
fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth
of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm,
or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar
to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his
fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of
the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial
ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand
airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the
gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling
to the autumn heat!
Air ships? Had the modern world gone mad over air ships? This fellow
had been sending out whole navies of air ships for thousands of years;
seeding the mighty mountains; fighting all rivals; travelling on the
wings of the wind, and if consumed by fire, then, like the phoenix
springing to new life from the ashes, sending forth fresh armadas from
the pendant purplish cinnamon-scented cones split open by the heat and
so releasing fresh winged seeds!
Wayland used to dream, as he rode down the hog's back trail, of the day
coming when all the National Forests would be a great park, the
people's playground, yielding bigger annual harvest in ripe lumber than
the wheat fields or the corn; yielding income for the State and health
for the Nation. Germany did it. Why couldn't America? Why not,
indeed; except that she had not exterminated her pirates of the public
weal, her freebooters of the wilderness, her slippery fingered
pick-pockets, who shouted "_I am Uncle Sam_," while they picked Uncle
Sam's pockets?
Riding down the hog's back, you first left the larches and the junipers
below the snow line, the junipers beginning to show their berries, the
larches yellowing and shedding their golden shower to the approach of
autumn. Then, a turn of the trail; and you were among the hemlocks,
funereal and sombre in the distance, wonderfully lightened when you
were below them by the sage-green moss and the pale silver blue lining
on the under side of the leaves. Another turn or two, there came the
feathery sugar pine and the Douglas spruce--the monarchs of the
North-Western Forests--plume decked warriors carrying a glint of spears
with the scars of a thousand years and a thousand victories in the
wrinkled bark, with cones like tassels, and whorls like banners. You
could count these whorls, or the scars of the whorls; and you had their
years; and the bluish green shade was restful as the repose of age.
The smell of them, it was like incense; incense to the deity of the
woods; and when the wind blew, every old evergreen harped the age-old
melodies of Pan. And, oh, yes, there were warriors scarred from the
fight, fellows with corky arms and mottled streaks where the lightning
had struck and splintered. Only the cheesy-hearted, the warriors with
maggots and grubs manufacturing punk out of heart-wood, for all the
world like humans infected by evil thoughts, only the hollow hearted
came down to earth with a crash in the fray.
Another turn, you were among the lodge-pole pines and englemann
spruce--pure park, Wayland always thought, the delight of a Forester's
heart; warm human open park places where you kept looking for deer
though you knew there weren't any. In riding down the backbone of the
Ridge, Wayland always planned to camp under the lodge pole pines; it
was so cool, so rain-proof and sun-proof, with an almost certainty of a
mountain stream somewhere near, and if you had eyes to see, a game
trail down to the stream. To-night, he went on down to the _Brulé_, a
cross section of the mountain swept by fire years before the Forest
Service had taken hold in the days when millmen had been permitted to
take out windfall and burn free, and all a millman had to do to become
a millionaire in free lumber was set the incendiary fire going to
create windfall. In his own district, Wayland knew two men who had
become rich in that way; but of course, _that_ was long ago. The
Forest men had cleared out the windfall and burn; and now, the deity of
the woods, Nature, was at work! By the moonlight, the Ranger could see
the pale chalky peach-bloom boles of the ghost birches, and the satiny
poplars and cottonwoods, turning gold to the approaching autumn but
going down gay, twinkling, laughing fellows to the year's death,
actually clapping their hands, shaking with glee, sending leaves down
in a rain of gold, which, it is to be hoped, the pixies picked up, the
pixies sailing the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed!
Wayland could see these airy ships between him and the silver
moonlight, dropping seeds--seeds--seeds; seeds of fire flower and
golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults;
sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and
skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff
and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years!
And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the
chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing and shaking with glee, and
the cottonwoods showering down a rain of gold in their death; stood the
little pines seeded by the wind, nursed by the shade of the quick
growing trees. Who would be living and loving and fighting and hating
and winning and losing when these little fellows rose to toss and
flaunt their victory in the face of the sky? Was that the meaning of
life after all, the strength and thew, the valor and might of the fight
up? Then, it was not such a bad way with the Nation. The Nation would
be the better for this fight. Certain, it was, the better side would
win. Would it be the few like the sugar pine towering over its
fellows; or the many like the lodge pole pine and englemann spruce
standing in serried ranks of equal valor and power?
And if you think he could take that ride without wishing to the "nth"
degree that she could be with him to share the joy, then, I assure you,
you don't know to what music those gay, twinkling, trembling gold
leaves above the _Brulé_ were beating time all night to the whisper of
the wind and rustle of the pixy parachutes sailing mid-air.
CHAPTER XXV
THE QUESTION IS--WHICH UNCLE SAM?
Before, it had been a race-reverie; a waiting, puzzled and uncertain
for the ways of life. Now, it was the joy of life, the fulfilment for
which life had been created and waited expectant; and whether the ways
were any plainer in the new light, there was no room for wonder in the
fulness of joy. Eleanor was glad the little bundle of tawdry loquacity
toddling between them kept up a constant stream of idle boastings on
the road to the Mission House, about being "waal-thy" and "Faather
shure bein' a gen'leman when they were waal-thy" and "herself as foine
as eny loidy in th' land," and more and more of the same, all the way
down the Ridge Trail; which was not so fatuous as it sounded, when it
voiced the convictions of a great many more people than the little
unwashed garlicky Shanty Town dancer. Eleanor wondered if the same
arguments applied to the culture of horses and pigs and potatoes--size
instead of sort, fulness of stomach not quality of head, area of
possession not area of service.
The garrulous babble continued to the very doors of the Mission School,
and through the formalities of an absurdly formal introduction to Mrs.
Williams, and during the suppertime meal with the little Indian
children in the big dining room. Eleanor noticed how Lizzie's lips
pursed with contempt at the other children and the little stomach poked
out with arrogance and fulness as the boasting waxed.
"That kind is the most hopeless of all," remarked Mrs. Williams in a
low voice, amused at the amazement on the faces of the Indian children.
Yet Eleanor was glad. The babble gave her opportunity for withdrawal
in her own thoughts; and when she came back to the Ranch House with
Matthews, leaving Lizzie still boasting at the School, she hardly
noticed that her father stopped the frontiersman on the threshold, but
she passed out to the steamer chair on her own piazza. What was _It_?
Eleanor could not have answered if she had tried. She only knew that
she had drunk of the fulness of living, and that time could not rob her
of that consciousness. It was there, forever with her, breathing in
every breath, pulsing in the rhythm of her blood, "Closer than hands or
feet," as the Pantheistic poet has sung, immanent, enveloping,
possessory, obsessory, warm, living, a flooding realization of life,
giving tone to every touch of existence, like the strings of the violin
to the bow of the skilled musician. She wanted to sing; the long, low,
jubilant chant of womanhood which no poet has yet sung. By the joy of
it, she knew what the sorrow of it must be. By the purity, she
realized what the poisoning of the fountain springs of life could mean.
By the triumph, she realized what the defeat, the debasement could be.
She thought of love as a fountain spring, a spring into which you could
not both cast defilement and drink of waters undefiled; as an altar
flame fed with incense lighting the darkness; and one could no more
offend love with impurity, than cast the dung heap on the altar flame
and not expect blastment. She wanted to clap her hands as the gay,
twinkling cottonwoods were clapping theirs to the sunset; to dance and
beat gypsy tambourines as the pines were throbbing and harping and
clicking to the age-old melodies of Pan. She wanted--what was it? Had
the Israelitish women of old timed their joy to the rhythm of the
dance; or was it a later strain, the strain from the tribal woman of
the plains who heard a voice in the music of the laughing leaves, and
the throb of the river, and the shout of the sun-glinted cataract, and
the little lispings and whisperings of the waves among the reeds? The
stars came pricking out. Each hung a tiny censer flame to the altar of
night and holiness and mystery. She knew she could never again see the
stars come pricking through the purple dusk without feeling the stab of
joy that had wakened death to life when recognition had struck fire in
consciousness. She knew, then, there was no eternity long enough for
the joy of _It_, nor heaven high enough for the reach of _It_, nor hell
deep enough for the wrong of _It_.
There was a click of the mosquito wire door opening out on her piazza.
It was her father.
"Matthews and I are going to take the fast team and the light buckboard
and drive down to Smelter City to-night. Will you be all right,
Eleanor?"
"I? Oh, of course! Nothing wrong is there, Father?"
"Nothing, whatever!" She remembered afterwards the shine and look of
lonely longing in the black eyes. "We have to be in Smelter City,
tomorrow; think it best to drive down in the cool of evening! Day
stage is a tiresome drive. You'll be all right, Eleanor?"
If she could only have known, how she would have spent herself in his
arms; but it is, perhaps, a part of the irony of life that the best
service is silent; that the loudest service, like the big drum, is the
emptiest; only we never know the quality of that big drum till a
specially hard knock tests it. She remembered afterwards how he half
hesitated. He was not a demonstrative man, nor a handling one; only a
dumb doer of things next, regardless of consequences; and we don't
realize what that means till we are too old to pay tribute and they to
whom tribute is due have passed our reach.
"I, oh, of course I'll be all right! Would you like a lunch or
something?"
"No, never mind! Keep Calamity by you! Go to bed early, have a good
sleep! 'Night," he said. The mosquito door clicked and he had gone.
A moment later, the yellow buck board had rattled down the River road,
and her father did what he had never done before, he turned and lightly
waved his hat.
If Eleanor could have known it, he was saying at that moment:
"Matthews, you can fight the world, the flesh, and the devil; but you
can't fight against the stars."
The old frontiersman didn't answer for a little. When he spoke, it was
very soberly:
"No, when it's that, you'll work for the stars spite o' y'rself! Why,
A contrived the meetin' myself this vera afternoon; wha' d' y' think o'
that for an old fool? A'll be goin' back empty handed, an' all m' own
doin'!"
"And I'll have built plans for twenty years on,--on the sands," and
MacDonald flicked the bronchos up with his whip.
There was a long silence but for the crunch of the wheels through the
road dust.
"MacDonald," said Matthews abruptly, "A'm goin' t' see this thing
thro'. A don't mean y'r daughter's love; th' angels o' Heaven have
that in _their_ own charge! A'm referrin' t' this mine thing! There's
evil brewin'! A'm goin' t' see this thing thro'; an' A make no doubt
y'r goin' to do th' same! A'm no wantin' t' pry into y'r affairs,
MacDonald; but--is y'r will made an' secure?"
The sheep rancher flicked his whip at the bronchos and took firmer hold
of the reins.
"Copper rivetted," he said.
We call _It_ clairvoyance; and we call _It_ intuition; and we call _It_
instinct; and we might as well call it x, y, z for all these terms
mean. We do not know what they mean. Neither do we know what _It_ is.
We hear _It_ and obey _It_; and _It_ brings blessedness. In the din of
life's insistent noise, we sometimes do not hear _It_. That is, we do
not hear _It_ until afterwards when the curse has come. Then, we
remember that we did hear _It_, though we did not heed it.
It was so with Eleanor after her father passed from the Ranch House
that night. Afterwards, she knew that she had noticed the wistful look
on his face; but the memory of it did not come to the surface of
thought till she heard the click of Calamity's door in the basement and
recollected his words; "Keep Calamity by you." Also, at that very
moment, a great gray racing motor car swerved out across the white
bridge from the Senator's ranch buildings and went spinning down the
Valley road, the twin lanterns before and behind cutting the dark in
the double sword of a great search light that etched the sheathed pine
needles and twinkling cottonwoods in black against a background of
gold. Eleanor was perfectly certain she saw the same two hats in the
back seat that had met Wayland at the Cabin that afternoon.
"Calamity," she called down over the piazza railing.
The native woman came up the piazza stairs on a pattering run.
"Why has everybody gone down to Smelter City to-night? Is anything
wrong?"
The Cree woman's shawl had fallen back from her head. She stood
kneading her fingers in and out of her palms. There was a strange wild
look in the dark eyes and her breathing labored. "It ees Moyese," said
Calamity slowly. "He 'xamin d' mine t'-morrow."
"Why, Calamity, that is perfect nonsense! Moyese won't examine the
mine, at all! This young fellow from Washington is the one to examine
the mine?"
Calamity continued to knit her fingers in and out. "All 'same," she
said, "Messieu Waylan', he telephone Messieu MacDonal' come 'mine help
him t'-morrow!"
"Telephone my father? Why, how could he? I have been right here,
Calamity?"
"You go see Missy Villam, leetle gurl," explained Calamity. "Messieu
Waylan' he ride down hog back trail woods all night, 'lone! He ring
ting--ling--says he go 'samin mine."
Then, the child's babble, the looks of the two at the Cabin, her
father's wistful face, the quick departure of Matthews and himself,
followed almost immediately by Moyese's motor, confirmed Calamity's
incoherent account. Eleanor ran out to the telephone in the living
room, and rang for the Ranger's Cabin. There was no answer on the
local circuit, and Central at Smelter City could only say "They don't
answer! Try local!"
Yet why should she feel such alarm? Had he not gone down to the
Desert, and come back, and she had not known fear? Was the fear for
her father? Was it her father's wistful look? What could she do?
Would he wish her to do anything? This, too, was on the Firing Line,
but reason how she would, she could not subdue her fears, nor keep the
tremor from her hands as she ran back to the bed room dimly lighted by
the candle above the desk at the head of the bed.
"Calamity, you don't think there is any danger to Father?"
Then Calamity did the strangest thing that ever Eleanor had seen her
do. She had thrown off the shawl. She had drawn herself up on
moccasined tip-toes, and seemed suddenly to have thrown off age and
abuse and disgrace and rags and sin, with her eyes fixed stonily on the
far spaces of her wrecked youth, the lids wide open, the whites
glistening, a mad look in the dilated pupils shining like fire; and her
fingers were knitting in and out of her palms.
"M' man," she whispered, "dey keel heem, dey hang heem! M' babee, dey
take it away, d' pries' he sing--sing an' wave candle an' bury it in
snow. Leetle Ford, d' keel heem! D' punish Indian man, d' hang heem,
m' man! Moyese, he keel leetle Ford: he go free, not'ng hurt heem!"
She burst out laughing, low voiced cunning laughter. "I go see," she
said. "I ride down hog's back t' d' mine! I go see! Messieu
MacDonal'--He help me! I help heem! I go see," and before Eleanor had
grasped the import of the words, the woman had darted out into the
dark; and a moment later, Eleanor heard the basement door clang. There
was the pound-pound of a horse being pulled hither and thither, leaping
to a wild gallop, then the figure of Calamity bare-headed, riding
bareback and astride, cut the moonlight; and the ring of hoof beats
echoed back from the rocks of some one going furious, heedless up the
face of the Ridge towards the hog's back trail.
Eleanor called up the Mission School telephone: Mr. Williams had heard
nothing; he didn't believe there was any cause for alarm; the child was
patently and plainly an astounding little liar! About Calamity? Oh,
yes, Eleanor was not to be alarmed! She had gone off in those mad fits
ever since her baby died up on Saskatchewan. It had been very
distressing; was in winter time, and she wouldn't release the dead
child from her arms; they had to take it from her by force; she always
came back after a week or two of wandering! Would Eleanor like some
one to come over and stay in the Ranch House? And Eleanor being a true
descendant of the Man with the Iron Hand flaunted personal fear; and
went back to a sleepless but not unhappy night in her room. Why did
the news that Calamity's child had died bring such a sense of relief?
How simply does life deck out her tragedies! There is no prelude of
low-toned plaintive orchestral music tuned to expectancy. There is no
thunder barrel; or if there is a thunder barrel, you may know that the
tragedy is theatrical and hollow in proportion to the size of its
emptiness. And there is no graceful curtain-drop between it and real
life, permitting you to rise from your place and go home happy.
MacDonald was stepping into the bucket to descend the last shaft of the
mine when something on the edge of the _Brulé_ arrested his glance; in
fact, two things: one was Calamity coming out from the trail of the
hog's back through the young cottonwoods and poplars, riding bareback
and looking very mad, indeed; the other, was O'Finnigan from Shanty
Town on foot, staggering and mad as whiskey could make him, coming up
the narrow rock trail from Smelter City.
"Go on," said MacDonald curtly to the others. "I'll keep the notes
safe up here, and give Sheriff Flood a hand at the hoist!"
All had gone well, exceedingly well, in the examination of the mine.
It had begun sharp at twelve o'clock when the day shift came out with
their dinner pails. It will be remembered the Ridge sloped down to a
burnt area, known as the _Brulé_, overgrown with young poplars and
birches and yet younger pines. The _Brulé_ slanted down to a roll of
rock and shingle and gravel above the City known as Coal Hill. It was
on the face of this hill that the mines lay. You could see the black
veins coming out on the face of the cliff; and into the cliff
penetrated two parallel tunnels. Up and down from these tunnels
rattled the trucks on serial tramways to and from the Smelter, weaving
in and out of the tunnel mouths like shuttles, run by gravitation
pressure. If the mines were worthless, or worth only the five, ten,
and three-hundred dollars that the Ring had paid the "dummy"
homesteaders for each quarter section, these shifts of a hundred men at
a time, and trucks and tramways would have offered a puzzle to any one
but the downy-lipped youth, who had come to examine them.
When Wayland arrived at the mine with Matthews and MacDonald, he found
the federal investigator on hand with Mr. Bat Brydges, who was out for
news features, and the news editor of the "Smelter City Herald," who
somehow gave the Ranger a look mingled of smothered anger and
friendliness. If Mr. Bat Brydges felt any embarrassment, he did not
show it. Indeed, the handy man would have felt proud of the very
things of which he had accused the Ranger; and it is to be doubted if
the door of decent shame remained open; if, indeed, the harboring of
thoughts like the flocking of the carrion bird to putridity does not
pre-suppose a kind of inner death. And as the party were donning blue
overalls to descend into the mine, who should come on the scene but Mr.
Sheriff Flood, "to see that ev'thing waz al' right," he explained,
exhibiting a protuberant rotundity due reverse of the compass that had
been most prominent when Wayland last saw him; and if the doughty
defender of the law felt any embarrassment, like the handy man, he did
not show it. Indeed, this mighty man of valor could truthfully be
described as fat of brain, fat of chops, fat of neck, and fattest of
all in the rotundity of this strutting stomach. In fact, he seemed
proud of that hummocky part of his anatomy and swung it round at you
and rested his hands clasped across it as he talked.
"Jis' thought I'd happen along! Wife didn't want me to: women are all
skeery that way; but I jis' thought I'd happen along an' nut let her
know!"
"All sorts o' things might chance in a mine, mightn't they?" cut in
Matthews with a twinkle of his eye more merry than good natured.
The Sheriff smiled a sickly smile and ''lowed they could'; and
everybody walked into the lowest tunnel leaving the fire guard lanterns
outside; for this tunnel was lighted by electricity. As they all
walked in, the Sheriff was to the rear.
"Here, you, Mr. Sheriff," Matthews blurted out, going to the rear of
the procession, "seems to me my place is kind o' back o' behind o' you."
The Sheriff smiled a sickly smile and ''lowed it waz.'
Wayland took the record of the mine's output per day. (It averaged a
net return of forty per cent. dividend on a capitalization of ninety
million.) Then, he took the record of what the Smelter could consume
per day. The difference must be used for shipment or storage. Wayland
did the counting and measuring. MacDonald jotted down the notes. The
downy-lipped youth proceeded along the tunnel with an air of supreme
contempt. It was as they were about to enter the second tunnel that
his superiority expressed itself. Matthews afterwards said it was
because the black water drip or coal sweat was seeping through the
overalls.
"I don't see what we're delaying to take all these specific
measurements for anyway," he said.
"Don't you?" asked Wayland. "Then I'll tell you! I have the affidavit
of the most of the 'dummies' that the homestead entries were
fraudulent! You could see that if you knew that men can't farm at an
angle of ninety! In case that fails, I want proof that this coal is so
valuable it is being shipped out. I want exact proofs of the exact
profits being made on the fraudulently acquired mines."
"What's your idea? Shut 'em up from development for ever?" asked
Brydges belligerently.
"Brydges," said Wayland, "when you find you can't throw your pursuer
off the trail by the skunk's peculiar trick of defence, I'd advise you
to try kicking sand in the public's eyes and drawing a rotten herring
across the trail! This time, I think you'll find, the public won't go
off the trail after the rotten herring. They'll keep on after the
thief."
It was at that stage, Bat fell back abreast of the Sheriff, and
Matthews behind heard one of the two say, "Damn him, then, let him go
on and examine his bellyfull! It's his funeral; not ours!"
Wayland not only examined the second tunnel above the first, but he
insisted on descending a shaft that had been sunk almost vertically
from the crest of Coal Hill to get a measurement of the veins, for
stoping, or cross cutting, or drifting or some such technical work, I
forget what; but the vertical shaft afforded estimates of the depth of
the veins. Because it was not a regular avenue of work but only of
examination, it had not been equipped with steam hoist and electric
light, but was furnished only with such old fashioned hand winch as the
stage driver had described to Eleanor. A huge bucket depended by cable
from the hand hoist. It was as they were all lighting lanterns and
stepping in, that MacDonald took a look at the hoist and noticed that
the Sheriff was to give a hand at the winch.
"Not coming Brydges?" asked Matthews, who was already in the bucket.
"Oh, I guess I'm a pretty heavy man to go in that."
"Then, A guess you're afraid of what's goin' t' happen! We're not
goin' down, without you, m' boy."
Bat winked at the Sheriff and clambered in. It was then something on
the edge of the _Brulé_ arrested MacDonald's glance; Calamity coming
through the cottonwoods mad and dishevelled, O'Finnigan reeling up from
the Smelter City trail mad with whiskey, waving a bottle and
shouting--"What's th' use o' anything? Nothing! I'm Uncle Sam!
Hoorah!"
"Go on," ordered MacDonald curtly. "I'll keep the notes safe up here,
in my pocket, Wayland! I'll stay and give Sheriff Flood a hand at the
hoist!"