During his convalescence, Stephen had many callers. Mr. Cameron paid him
a short visit, and briskly and efficiently expressed his gratitude. At
least this was the way in which Loring characterized it to himself, after
his departure. From motives of kindness, most of the foremen and men from
the office force came in to see him; from motives of self-interest, the
visits were generally repeated, for Loring combined a drollness, a vein
of narrative, and a wide range of experiences.
McKay was one of those who dropped in frequently to discuss the affairs
of the camp in short, jerky sentences, which alternated with the puffs
from his stubby black pipe. Stephen, by a great amount of reticence as
to his own personal affairs, had won McKay’s respect as a wise man. He
was by nature of an exuberant temperament; but experience had taught him
that taciturnity was the best way to acquire a reputation for solidity
in a community. About four years previous to this time, when he had
embarked in life in the West, the first man under whom he had worked had
commented upon his garrulous propensities rather caustically. His words:
“You don’t want to talk too much in this world, young feller; it ain’t
pleasant,” had been borne in upon Loring to the great improvement of his
character. McKay had once in the course of a discussion of different
men’s capabilities expressed the Western view very tersely. He had said:
“The wisest man I ever knew was a fellow in Nogales. I never heard him
open his mouth once!”
Loring’s visitors, however, were not all of such a character. Every
morning Miss Cameron came into the hospital and greeted Stephen with
a gay smile that made pain seem a base currency with which to pay for
such happiness. He had come to look forward to the few minutes during
which she talked to him as the oasis of his day. As time went on, his
thoughts of her grew more absorbing. A man when convalescent can, with
the greatest of ease, fall in love with an abstract ideal, so that when a
very charming concrete example was near, the process of dreaming speedily
crystallized to a point where Stephen found himself very much in love.
For many hours after one of her visits he lay staring at the ceiling,
trying to find some adjective by which to describe her. Failing in his
direct search, he fell back on the method of question and answer. Was she
beautiful? he asked himself. It was many years since he had seen women of
her class, and it was hard for him to find a comparative standard. He was
certain that she was a joy to look upon. Had she sympathy? Her kindness
to the sick Mexicans in the hospital was a ready answer to that question.
Was she feminine? She had a quality of comradeship and companionship
combined, which previously he had only associated with men. Yet back of
it was a latent coquetry, and unconsciously it piqued him to feel that
towards him there was no trace of it. Strive as he would, he could find
no word which could fit all the opposing sides of her character, her
aloof frankness, her subtle force.
“Fall-in-love-withable-ness,” he reflected, “is not a recognized word,
and yet it is the one that describes her.”
At last came the days when with effort at first, then with ease, he could
stroll from shack to shack about the camp. He often spent his time
in the assay office, watching the assayer tend the delicate balances,
or precipitate the metal from the various shades of blue liquid which
stood on the ledge by the window in neat rows of test-tubes. Then there
was the _tienda_, where, sitting on a box in the corner, he could watch
the Mexicans as they crowded up to the bookkeeper’s window, loudly
calling out their numbers, and asking for coupons. The air in the store
was always thick with the smell of “_Ricorte_” or “_Pedro_” tobacco.
There were also in the glass cases gaudy tinfoil-wrapped cigars, “_Dos
Nationes_,” which the more lavish and wealthy purchased, and which added
a slightly more expensive hue to the smoky atmosphere. Often, too, he
would loaf about the draughting-room, where at first he amused himself by
drawing exceedingly impressionistic sketches on the bits of paper that
were scattered about.
Stephen possessed that rare quality of being able to loaf without being
in the way. His loafing added a pleasant background to work that others
were doing, instead of being an irritant. Gradually he came to helping
Duncan, the surveyor, to check up his figures, and, much to the latter’s
surprise, in speedy fashion worked out logarithms for him. Loring as
a subordinate always did so well that it made his incompetency, when
given responsibility, doubly disappointing. Duncan, whose mathematical
methods were, though no doubt safer, far slower, grew to have an
excessive opinion of Loring’s ability, and expressed it about the camp.
He often questioned Stephen as to where he had acquired his knowledge of
logarithms; but Loring always told him that he had merely picked it up at
a way station on the journey of life. As curiosity about others rarely
goes deep in Arizona, the subject had been finally taken for granted, and
dropped.
One day while Stephen was working with Duncan, Mr. Cameron entered the
room, and said abruptly: “Well, Loring, are you about ready for work?”
“Yes,” said Stephen, “I was going to work for Mr. McKay again to-morrow.”
Mr. Cameron paused for a moment, and looked him over carefully. He
noticed the clear light of the eyes, and he was pleased. He noticed the
indecisive lines at the corners of the mouth, hesitated, and almost
imperceptibly shook his head. Years of experience had taught him to read
men’s faces well. This was the first which he had ever liked, and yet not
quite trusted. The combination of feeling puzzled him.
Loring had begun to flush a trifle under the sharp scrutiny, before Mr.
Cameron again spoke.
“I was thinking of giving you a position on the hoist. The man on Number
Three is going to quit to-morrow.” Mr. Cameron said “quit,” with a little
snap of the jaw, that left no doubt as to why the man was going to leave.
“Do you know anything about the work?” he went on.
Loring’s “No, but I think perhaps I can learn,” seemed to irritate Mr.
Cameron, who exclaimed: “Good Lord, man! ‘think perhaps you may be able
to learn.’ ‘Think perhaps!’ Here you are going to have men’s lives in
your hands. It is no place for a man who thinks ‘perhaps.’ Still I will
try you. You will receive three dollars and a half for eight hours, and
overtime, extra. At that the work is not hard. You can go up to the shaft
now. Colson, the man whom you are going to try to replace, is on shift,
and he will teach you what he can. You go on the pay-roll to-morrow.”
Cutting short Stephen’s thanks, Mr. Cameron abruptly left the office.
Duncan began to chuckle quietly.
“It is damned lucky for you, Loring, that you didn’t go on much further
with your theories of ‘thinking perhaps.’ I don’t know where you were
before you came here, and I don’t care; but here it will help you some to
remember that it is only what you _do_ know or _can_ do that counts.”
Stephen took cheerfully this good advice, and after securing his hat,
he stretched himself comfortably in the doorway, then started up the
hill to the mine. In the hot glare he climbed the tramway which led
from the hungry ore cribs by the smelter to Number Three hoist. He was
still weak, and the climb tired him considerably. Several times, in the
course of the few hundred yards, he stopped and rested. As many times
more he was compelled to step to one side of the track in order to let
the funny, squat, little ore cars whiz by him, the brake cable behind
them stretching taut, and whining with the peculiar note of metal under
tension. When at last, tired and out of breath, he reached the hoist
box, Colson gave him a sour greeting.
“Damned boiler leaks like a sieve. Have to keep stoking her all the time.
Engine is always getting centered. Wish you joy! It’s the worst job I
ever tackled.”
In answer to Loring’s request for instructions, Colson slowly wiped his
hands on a bit of oily waste, and having taken a fresh chew of tobacco,
proceeded to explain the working of the drum hoist, and the signal code.
For the rest of the afternoon, under Colson’s supervision, Stephen
managed the clutch that governed the cable, and at the ever recurring
clang of one bell, ran the ore buckets with great speed up the shaft.
Whenever the signal of three bells, followed by one, rang out, he brought
the buckets slowly and decorously to the surface, for that told of a
human load. Loring, in spite of apparent clumsiness, possessed a great
amount of deftness, and he was soon running the hoist fairly well,
although the jerks with which the engine was brought to a standstill told
the miners that a new and inexperienced hand was at the clutch.
At half-past three the men of the shift began to signal to come to the
surface. Loring asked Colson how, when the shift did not end till four,
this was allowed. Colson explained that as the mine was non-Union, and
employed mostly Mexican labor, the piece work system was in use. When
the men had filled a certain number of buckets, they could come to the
surface regardless of the time. The result had been that more work was
accomplished than formerly, while the miners had shorter hours.
“That is all very pleasant,” reflected Stephen, “if the company, having
seen how active the men can be, does not increase the number of buckets
required.”
Shortly before four o’clock they were relieved by the engineer for the
next shift, who undertook the task of lowering the waiting men. Then
Colson and Loring, picking up their coats, walked slowly down the hill
into the camp. At the smelter Loring parted with Colson and walked over
to his own quarters. Since his dismissal from the hospital, he had been
sharing a tent with one of the shift bosses—a man about whom Stephen knew
little except the fact that he was named Lynn, and that he never washed.
The company rented tents with board floors, for two dollars a month, so
that when the quarters were shared, household expenses were not large.
As Loring threw back the wire-screened door of the tent, Lynn, from
within, greeted him with mild interest.
“I hear they are goin’ to try you on Number Three. Now over where I used
to work in Black Eagle, they wouldn’t let a green man even smell the
hoist. It ain’t safe, nor legal. But I suppose the Boss had to give you
_some_ job. All wrong, though.”
Loring kept discreet silence in answer to this, and after fetching a
bucket of water, proceeded to wash with many splashes. This annoyed Lynn,
who grunted: “How can a man do any work with you wallowin’ round like a
herd of steers?” Then he returned to his previous occupation of poring
over location papers for some claims of his “up yonder.” These claims
were the joke of the camp, on account of their remoteness from any known
ore vein, yet Lynn, unaffected by the waves of exultation or depression
which from time to time swept through the camp, year by year persisted in
doggedly doing his assessment work.
In Arizona almost every man, no matter what his occupation or station,
has “some claims up in the hills.” These claims furnish the romance
of his life, for always beneath the grimmest present lies the golden
“perhaps” of a rich strike.
Stephen sat on the edge of his cot, rolling a cigarette and watching
Lynn’s profile.
“There are some people,” he meditated, “who would not look cheerful if
they were paid so much a smile.” When Lynn had finished his papers, he
rose with solemn deliberative slowness, took down a black felt hat from a
wooden peg on the tent pole, transferred his toothpick from the left side
of his mouth to the right, and slouched towards the door.
“Come on over to grub!” he called back. Loring joined him, and together
they walked over to the company mess.
As they picked their way along the sordid road, Stephen looked at the
dirty houses of the Mexicans with a feeling of repulsion. They were built
from all the refuse that could be gathered: old sheet iron, quilts,
suwara rods, a few boards, broken pieces of glass and tarred paper.
A broken-down wagon, on one wheel, lurching in a dissipated fashion
against a boulder, added to the disreputability of the tin-can-strewn
road. While he and Lynn were plodding moodily along, Stephen suddenly
heard behind him the clatter of horses’ hoofs. He turned. The scene no
longer seemed sordid, for riding up the road was Miss Cameron. Around her
rode five or six little girls,—the camp children,—their legs, too short
to reach the stirrups, stuck in the leathers, their hair flying in all
directions, while their stiff little gingham dresses fluttered in the
breeze. Jean, riding a gray pony, sat clean limbed and lithe across the
saddle. The deep full modeling of breast and thigh, the proud carriage
of the shoulders, and the easy swing of her body to the lope of the
horse—all bespoke high health and keen enjoyment. Her khaki skirt fell on
either side in yellow folds against the oiled brown of the saddle. She
wore no hat, and the sunlight struck clear and sparkling upon her tawny
hair. Her color was fresh from the sting of the wind.
Stephen stepped aside to let the little cavalcade pass; but Miss Cameron
reined in her pony, and smilingly greeted him and his companion. Her
convoy of little girls bade her a grateful “good-bye,” and scattered to
their homes in the various parts of the camp.
“You seem to be a ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin,’” remarked Stephen, looking up
at her. Lynn for some reason appeared uneasy.
“No, I don’t decoy them,” she answered. “In fact, I try hard to get away
from them, but they are not allowed to ride alone in the valley, and
consequently whenever they see my pony saddled they swarm about me like
bees and cannot be shaken off. Are you sure that you are strong enough to
be out of the hospital?” Miss Cameron added, scrutinizing Stephen with
friendly solicitude.
Loring was busying himself with the problem of whether her eyes were
really gray or blue. He gathered his wits together however to answer that
he was growing better steadily.
“Well, good night, and be sure to continue to get better!” The girl shook
the reins of her pony, and galloped off towards the corral.
Lynn could no longer contain himself.
“Look a-here, Loring. I don’t know where you was brought up, but Miss
Cameron is a lady, if ever I seed one, and whar I come from, gentlemen
don’t call ladies ‘Pi-eyed Pipers.’”
Stephen, with a start, came out of his wistful mood, then almost
collapsed with laughter. Lynn stalked along in silent wrath, not speaking
another word until they entered the mess room.
It was half-past five, and the room was still crowded, though that many
had come and gone was attested by the pools of coffee on the zinc tables,
the bread crumbs on the floor, and the great piles of dirty dishes. In a
mining camp five o’clock is the fashionable supper hour, and he who comes
late has cause to rue it. Loring and his companion cleared places for
themselves, and after the necessary preliminaries of wiping their cracked
plates on their sleeves, and obtaining their share from the great bowl of
stew in the center of the table, they proceeded to eat in businesslike
silence. There had been a time when such surroundings would have taken
away Stephen’s appetite, but that was far away. The proprietor walked
frequently up and down the room, answering mildly the contumely heaped
upon the food. He carried a large bucket from which he replenished the
coffee cups. Stephen quickly reached the dessert stage of the meal, and
the proprietor set that course before him. It consisted of two very
shiny canned peaches, floating in a dubious juice.
The man who owned the eating house was of a quiet, depressed nature
developed by years of endeavor to please boarders’ appetites at one
dollar a day and make a profit of seventy-five cents. Ordinarily dessert
consisted of one canned peach. Loring’s double allowance was a silent
tribute to the fact that he did not rail at the food as did the others,
and to the fact that once, when the purveyor had “spread himself” and
served canned oysters, Stephen had thanked him. This had been the third
time that the man had been thanked in all his life, and he stowed it away
in his strange placid brain.
When Stephen had finished his meal, he rose and joined the group of
men, who, as customary after supper, were lounging on the steps. The
proprietor, wearing his usual apologetic smile, soon joined them.
“Pretty good supper, boys?” he remarked tentatively.
Some one in the crowd moaned drearily. “Say, I know what good food
is. I used to eat up at the Needles, at a place so swell they give
Mexicans pie. Reg’lar sort of Harvey house, that was.” The proprietor,
still smiling, sadly withdrew, and the crowd returned to its former
occupations: commenting on the thin ponies of the Mexicans who galloped
by, and trying to catch the eyes of the señoritas as they strolled past,
arm in arm, seemingly stolid alike to the attentions and to the jests of
the men.
Many of the Indians, who had been brought from the San Carlos Reservation
to work on the railway grade, were in camp to make their simple purchases
of supplies. Stephen noticed with disgust the way the braves sat astride
their ponies with indolent grace, while beside them walked the squaws,
with the papooses slung in blankets over their shoulders.
“Good example of the ‘noble redman,’ isn’t it!” he exclaimed to McKay.
“Well, what can you expect?” chuckled the latter. “You know in their
marriage ceremony the brave puts the bit of his pony in the mouth of his
prospective bride. Sort of a symbol of equality and companionship between
man and wife, I reckon.”
As the twilight turned to dusk, the group gradually dissolved, till
Loring alone was left on the steps. It was peaceful there, and as he
drew on his old black pipe, a healthy feeling of contentment permeated
him. He felt that he could do his new work well. His last lessons, he
thought, had taught him concentration. He saw himself working up again
to a position of power. For some reason that even to himself was only
vaguely defined, he felt that now it was all infinitely worth while. As
for drink, he merely thought of it as an episode of the past. Stephen’s
worst fault lay in not grappling with his enemies until they had him by
the throat. As he sat smoking and dreaming, he was aroused by a cheerful
salutation.
“Howdy, me bludder? Me bludder, he feel fine?”
Stephen looked up to see Hop Wah standing in the road before him. With
his derby hat, yellow face, coal black pig-tail, and with a five-cent
cigar drooping from one corner of his mouth Wah was a strange combination
of Occident and Orient.
“Fine, thanks!” answered Loring, “but what are you doing up here in camp
now, Wah?”
Wah proudly puffed at his cigar, and blew a wreath of gray smoke from
between his flat lips.
“Me cook for the company here, now. Makee pie ebbrey day. Oh, lubbly,
lubbly pie! Me bludder come to back door, and I give him some. Oh,
lubbly, lubbly pie! Goodee bye. Goodee bye, me bludder!” Then Wah
departed in the direction of the _tienda_, marching cheerfully along to
his old refrain: “La, la, boom, boom; la, la, boom, boom.”
“The crazy Chinaman!” laughed Stephen. “He certainly enjoys life,
though.” Loring rose and knocked out the ashes of his pipe on the steps.
Then he walked towards his tent. They were just dumping the slag from
the smelter, and he watched the glowing slag pot shoot along the track
in front of him. As if by magic it checked at the end of the heap, and
poured its molten, flashing stream far over the embankment. The whole
camp glowed with a clear, all-suffusing orange light. The outline of the
surrounding mountains loomed out blue-black. The glow faded to dull red,
then dwindled to a mere thread of light, then disappeared, and all was
dark again.
During the next two months, with a concentration of which he had never
before thought himself capable, Stephen slaved at learning his task. To
feel that in his hands lay the lives of the sixteen men of the shift
gave him a sense of responsibility, which in all his former work had been
completely lacking. He was so faithful in the performance of his duties
that even the critical Mr. Cameron was secretly pleased, while Jean
watched with growing interest her father’s experiment, and felt that at
last Loring had ceased to drift.
Stephen, on his part, carried in his heart one memory which shortened
his working day, gladdened his leisure hours, and left no time for vain
regrets. This was the thought of one evening which he had spent at Mr.
Cameron’s house, on the occasion of a “Gringo” dance, whereto all the
workers in camp, except the Mexicans, had been bidden, in celebration of
Washington’s birthday.
Often did Stephen recall the flag-draped room, the Mexican orchestra,
which in color resembled a slice of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate
ice-cream. He remembered the lantern-lighted porch, its lamps blending
with the soft darkness of the southern night, hung with its own lanterns
of stars.
But all these were only a background of his real memories, which were
the warm touch of Jean’s hand, as he had held it in the dance for five
blessed minutes, and the sound of her voice as she had talked with him on
the porch, in the brief intervals when the guests had gathered around the
musicians, to invoke the “Star Spangled Banner” and urge that long might
it “Wa-a-ave!”
What they had talked about Stephen scarcely knew; but he had a confused
impression that under the commonplaces of their talk had lurked, on her
part, a hint of friendship which made his dreams perhaps not quite so
wild, for he recognized in her something softly invincible which once
having given friendship would never withdraw it, though the skies fell.
In fact, while Loring was playing cards over the mess table one evening,
Jean was putting her friendship to the proof in another quarter of the
camp.
“Father, he is a gentleman.” Jean made this remark after a period
of silence, during which she had sat on the porch of the shack,
contemplating the moon as it rode high in the unclouded sky.
“Who is a gentleman? The man in the moon?” As he asked the question,
Mr. Cameron withdrew his cigar from his mouth, and pulled the smoke in
leisurely rings into the air.
“No,” Jean answered, “not the man in the moon; the man on the hoist,
Stephen Loring.”
“What made you think of him?”
“I met him this afternoon in the valley. That put him into my head.”
“Well, I advise you to take him out again.”
“Not at all. I shall keep him there. He interests me, because he is a
gentleman.”
“What are the hall-marks of a gentleman?”
“Oh,” said Jean slowly, “there are a hundred little signs which cannot be
suppressed. A deacon may turn into a horse thief, or a millionaire into
a beggar; but once a gentleman, always a gentleman. Mr. Loring tries to
hide it; but he cannot. Oh, haven’t you noticed the difference?”
“Between Loring and the other men? No, I cannot say that I have. But I am
not particularly interested in the question whether my hoist engineers
are gentlemen.”
“Don’t you think you ought to be?”
“Why?”
Jean clasped her hands around her knee and looked out over the dim hills
bathed in the mist of the moonlight. After a while she said: “It must be
very lonely for a gentleman in a camp like this.”
“If you are thinking of Loring,” said her father, “he is busy all day and
he can go to the mess in the evening.”
“The mess!” exclaimed Jean scornfully. “Yes, fine place for a gentleman,
where the men chew tobacco and drink whisky all the evening, and tell
stories as long as they are broad!”
“All terribly offensive no doubt to a sensitive soul like your Mr.
Loring,” answered Mr. Cameron. “Perhaps,” he added with fine sarcasm,
“you would like to have him take his meals with us.”
“Yes, I would like to ask him here sometime. It is good in you to think
of it,” replied his daughter calmly.
“It cannot be done, Jean. It cannot be done,” Mr. Cameron said with
decision. “Discrimination among the men breeds discontent. I think that
we have done full enough for Loring as it is.”
“Do you?” Jean responded, with the audacity of a hot temper. “Well, I do
not; but then it was my life that he saved, and perhaps that makes me see
the thing differently. I am thinking that when a man saves your life you
cannot get rid of the obligation by throwing him a job, as you might toss
a bone to a dog. I am thinking that he has some claim on the life that he
has given back, and that the other person should spend a little of it in
doing something for him.”
“And, pray, what has his being a gentleman to do with all this?” asked
Mr. Cameron, whose wrath took the form of sarcasm. “Suppose that Colson
or Lynn had saved your life, would you have wished to have him at the
house?”
“Neither of them would have wished to come.”
“That is not honest, Jean. You know that they would; but you would never
ask them, except to one of your camp dances. You would not if they had
saved your life twenty times.”
“I should try to do something for them, something that they would like;
but if people are not of your kind there is no use in inviting them.
There is no kindness in it in the end.”
“Perhaps,” said her father, “there would prove to be no kindness in the
end in what you wish to do for Loring.”
“Very well. There is no use in arguing with a Scotchman; but I warn
you that I shall make it up to him in friendliness. The other men can
scarcely object to that.”
With these words Jean rose from the steps and, passing through the door,
entered the little living-room where she picked up a guitar from the
window-seat, and to its accompaniment began to sing in a low voice. What
was the song she chose? Why, it was “Jock o’ Hazeldean.” If ever a song
expressed flat mutiny it is that one, and it lost nothing in expression
from Jean Cameron’s rendering, from the beginning where the heroine
refuses to be commanded or cajoled, to the last line where “She’s o’er
the border and awa’ wi’ Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
Mr. Cameron was justified in being angry; but who could resist a voice
like Jean Cameron’s? Evidently not Jean’s father, for when the girl
came out again and smiling laid her hand upon his shoulder, Mr. Cameron
relaxed the grimness of his expression.
“Well, well, lassie, we will see what can be done for your gentleman
engineer,” he said encouragingly; “but don’t be ‘o’er the border and
awa’’ with Jock, till we know a little more about him, and about what is
thought of him in Hazeldean.”