When the young man to whom Mike had extended kindness passed from the
wicket, having agreed to tend cattle across the Atlantic for the sum of
fifteen shillings, he found that he had already been christened.
Perhaps his lack of diffidence in signing his name in the book which
was turned round to him by the clerk, after the quiet discussion of
terms was over, had suggested the new name to Mike.
"That's right, Scholar," he said.
"How much are you going to get?" asked the Inquisitive One, jumping
forward, left shoulder advanced, and thrusting his face close to
Scholar.
"He's after getting as much as you!" said Mike. "Don't you be telling
him, Scholar, or he'll be running back to the wicket and saying: 'I
want as much as the other feller there.'"
The Inquisitive One contented himself by looking at Mike's boots,
trousers and belt, torn waistcoat, shirt, and black-and-white scarf,
briefly at his face, and then, turning about, executed a heel and toe
movement of right foot and left foot alternately, looking at the others
and inclining his head towards Mike, in a kind of silent, noncommittal:
"You observe?" Mike, too, observed, as his slight drawing erect
signified, the slight toss of his chin, a dismissing toss, somewhat
leonine. Then his eye rested on the youth in the long coat, and
disapproval was in his eye. He had no objection to cattlemen in big
hats from "beyant," who had come down in the cars with cattle,
continuing across the Atlantic. He had no objection to other young men
in big hats, who had not come down with cattle, but who wanted to cross
the Atlantic. But that heavy, stolid, long-coated, legginged,
spectacled lout seemed to him an indignity thrust upon them. He
studied him a long while, with his weight now upon left foot, right
advanced, toe tapping the cobbles, anon shifting weight to his right
foot, leaning back, left foot advanced and left shoulder almost in a
fighting attitude. The man in the long coat did not seem to be one of
them. He might be going over this way simply to save money, not
because he was hard up. It was different with the short-nosed man in
the old soiled khaki; he did not seem to be by any means on his uppers,
but he looked as one to whom all this was part of the day's work. His
arrival had shown more clearly that Scholar might not be typical of men
from "beyant," or "the Great Plains where the cattle comes from,"
despite his hat, but Scholar still remained not anathema; he was brown
with the sun and the open air, and he had that touch of vagabondage
that made him welcome although an outsider. He had come into their
midst with an air of "If you don't mind, boys," but that long-coated,
and leggined, and spectacled one didn't come in at all; he was just
there. Mike had to ask the opinions of the others at this stage.
"What do you think of that?" he said quietly. "Is that a Jonah? Don't
like the look of it. Looks a Jonah."
Long Jack's partner, whose name was Johnnie, and who had a way of
varying the double-shuffling to the mouth-organ by striking belligerent
attitudes at the others and making feints at them with a fist, paused
in his mixture of double-shuffle and pugilistic rehearsal, to look at
the subject of Mike's doubt.
"_That!_" he said. He peered at him, walked a little way toward him
where he stood aloof, whirled on his heel, and coming back to the
group, raised a fist as if to smite and announced: "He's one of them
fellers that goes up on the Ontario farms, up in the bush--half silly,
farmers get them for their board; learn to milk cows, shovel horse
dung, and all that."
"Yus," said Cockney. "That's wot 'e is."
Mike's expression was like that of a man disgusted. Had he not already
told them this? Candlass put an end, for the time being, to farther
speculation.
"Get on to the main deck, you fellows," he ordered, "and you'll see
some bales of hay there. Cut them open and bed down."
The "Push" began to swarm up one of the gangways, the one nearer to
them, that led to the lower deck. Mike looked at it; its condition
showed that lower deck cattle were already on board.
"Indade," he said, "there's no sense in dirtying your shoes before ye
nade to," and he led the way to the second gangway, which was canted up
to the main deck, and was clean. The ascent was not much steeper, for
the gangway was longer and led off from farther back on the wharf.
"Oh, all right," said Candlass, as he saw his men going up in two
portions. "It's all the same." But he called after those who were
going up to the lower deck: "Don't you fellows hang about down there
when you get aboard."
They nodded, and some responded with an "Aye, aye, sir," and up they
ran, talking and laughing among themselves in jeering fashion.
Candlass stood on the dock and waited till they were on board, so that
those that turned their heads, when they stepped on deck, to look down,
met his eye. The "Push" gathered on the main deck. Those who had gone
direct to it, looking down the hatches, could see, what those who had
come up the other way already knew, that the lower deck cattle were
already all on board. The full complement was already there; and
beyond the docks were now the cling-clang of an advancing bell, a
locomotive bell, and more lowing of cattle. Amidships many bales of
hay had been tumbled.
"Now we want an axe," said Mike.
"There's a queer fellow below with an axe," volunteered one of those
who had come up by the lower deck. "Here he comes."
He came. He came as if to slaughter them all, a man of maybe fifty,
shirt open, one brace sustaining his trousers, bald-headed, almost
toothless, scarred upon the forehead. He was neither fat nor lean,
showing at once many protuberant bones, cheek and chin and breast
bones, and rolls of fat under chin, and on abdomen, to which his shirt
clung, damp from excessive labour in the stuffy ship. He charged upon
the bales of hay, smote furiously at the wires that bound them,
heedless of the possible scratches when they sprung apart, and yelling,
"Here you are! Roll it away--roll that away now," rolled the bale over
himself so that it fell apart as in compressed cakes or slices. "Well,
if you won't roll, carry away, carry away," he went on, hitting the
next bale; and, dodging his axe, the "Push" gathered armfuls and
hastened off to shake and to tease out these armfuls into the strong
pens ranged all round the ship's sides and down the ship's centre,
ranged so closely that if two men passed abreast they had need to be
slender men. Hardly had they finished coming and going on this
employment than the ki-yi-ing of men's voices, and the lowing of beasts
caused the bedders-down to pause and give ear. The man who had broken
open the bales suddenly appeared again, screaming oaths. "Come along
here, and tie up!"
Blundering up the deck, up the gangway, came steer after steer. When
they found themselves aboard, with bars such as the corral bars that
they knew of old before them, they wheeled sharply and away they went
running, lowing, away forward, then across the ship and down the other
side. The man with the axe rushed across, and every here and there
thrust a plank from front barrier to ship's side, turning the long
corral that ran round the ship into many smaller pens. Then came a
cessation in the river of steers that ran aboard.
"Come over here and I'll show you, Scholar," said Mike. What Mike had
to show to the tenderfoot cattleman was how to take the ropes that hung
all along the pen fronts, throw them over the steers' necks, pull the
slack end through a hole in the flat front board, knot it, and then let
it go. The hole in each case was only large enough to admit of the
rope, consequently the knot upon the end was all that was necessary for
making fast. It was a duty not without some excitement, for the
steers, arranged now in pens, thanks to the boards that the Mad Boss
had thrust across (five, six, or seven to a pen), would persist in
milling. Round and round they moved, and before each pen a man, or two
men, worked. After a few minutes the steers in the pen before which
Mike and Scholar laboured had each a rope tied round its neck. That
was the first duty done, not without scrimmage. And now they went on
to the second part of that work, the making fast. As steer by steer
was hauled up to the board, and the rope pulled through, there was
trouble.
"Watch your hands!" shouted Mike, hanging on to a halter while Scholar
tried to affix the knot. His shout was barely in time. The steer
flung backward, and smack went Scholar's hand against the board, for he
still clung tenaciously to the rope's end. "All right!" he replied,
for he had succeeded in making the knot just in time, and when the
steer strained back the knot also smacked on the board. A tug of war
began upon the next one. Farther away a sudden shout arose, and they
looked along the deck. The Mad Boss, who had been armed with an axe a
short time previously, was now blaspheming against the ship's side. He
had jumped into one of the pens, armed with a stick, in an endeavour to
make the animals face the front board, and one of them now had propped
itself against him. There was an unholy glee on the faces of some of
the men, those who looked upon the squeeze that he was getting as good
punishment for his method of treating them.
"You, you----" he half gurgled, half shouted a series of scathing names
at them. He caught Scholar's eye. "Can't you lend a hand here?"
Scholar could lend a hand. He grabbed up a piece of stick and vaulted
into the pen. After all, he had signed on as a cattleman, and a long
horn must not intimidate him. He hoped that even if he had not signed
on his pause before leaping to the rescue would have been of no longer
duration. The very close proximity of the steers among which he leapt
was his salvation. There was not room for them to run upon him, heads
down. He gave two twists to the tail of the steer that had pinned the
mad foreman; it relaxed and swung round facing the tying board, where
Mike adroitly grabbed the rope, hauled the loose end through, and
knotted it--just in time. Back went the animal's head, and smack came
the knot against the board.
"Now, you," said the mad-looking boss to Scholar. "Take care of
yourself. I'm all right now--aisy there. Slip over."
Scholar watched for his chance; but he did not slip over. The chance
came to slip under, and he did so, coming on to the alley-way with a
kind of side dive, while the man to whose rescue he had gone, seizing a
favourable opportunity, dodged into the neighbouring pen and from
thence gained the alley-way.
"That's being a man!" he said, nodding to Scholar. "Rafferty won't
forget ye."
"Who is he?" asked Scholar of Mike.
"Him? Oh, he's bossing the Lower Deck, but he's come up here till
Candlass comes aboard, I suppose."
Perhaps two hours later this instalment of steers was all tied up, and
the remaining space of deck, awaiting the next batch, was almost all
strewn with hay. Many of the men seemed bored. There was a constant
hinting that an adjournment for liquor should be made. Candlass had
not yet appeared; Rafferty had disappeared; the "Push" was alone, and
Mike seemed to be half in command.
"I tell yez," he said, "there's nobody going ashore till the
bedding-down's finished."
"Candlass didn't tell you to----" began he who has been spoken of as a
kind of diminutive Mike.
"Never mind what Candlass told me. I'm telling you that if Candlass
comes aboard and finds that we haven't finished bedding-down entoirely
it's me he'll jump on."
"Well, good luck, here's beddin'-dahn," said Cockney.
Mike drew erect, stretched, blew a great breath, and wiped his forehead
with the back of his hand.
"I could be doing with a drop meself," he said, "but duty's duty."
There was a halt in the arrival of the hay.
"Where's them lads bringing the hay?" he asked.
"Perhaps there ain't no more bales," said Cockney.
It might have been the Devil that prompted Scholar at that moment.
Perhaps he was feeling a little gay after his bout with the steers;
perhaps he thought how funny it would be if Mike led the way ashore for
refreshment after having so recently proclaimed that no man would go
ashore for that purpose until the bedding-down was over. Perhaps he
thought to make some sign to these men that he appreciated the fact
that they had not all cold-shouldered him as an outsider, and could
think of only one way to do it that would seem expressive to them.
"Well," he said, "let me stand the treat anyhow."
Mike turned upon him.
"Do you mane it?" he asked.
Scholar nodded.
"Come along, boys," cried Mike.
It now appeared that many of them had already vacated the deck. Jack
and Jack's partner and several others were gone. The cowboy was
nowhere to be seen; the man of the long coat and spectacles was all
alone, making some knots more sure upon the ropes, tying fresh ones on
those that had been knotted so near the end as to suggest to a watchful
eye that a few vigorous pulls of a steer's head would make them give.
"We'll lave him," said Mike, and those few who remained hurried to
depart, clustering round Mike and Scholar. A bo'sun at the gangway
said: "There's some more cattle coming up, you fellows."
"Let them come," replied Mike. "Everything's ready for them."
One of the "Push" told the bo'sun that there was a parson along there,
with spectacles on, who would tie them up, and down the gangway went
the crowd. Scholar perhaps need not have been so greatly vexed
afterwards for having carried these men away. As they went down the
gangway they woke to the fact that they were the only cattlemen left.
The others, who had come aboard with them under Candlass's eye, had
been more alert to note when the Mad Boss turned his back, and had
already hastened off to amuse themselves before sailing. Great
sizzling lights were by now lit above the wharf. Back in the shadows
of the shed could be seen many tossing horns. Neither Candlass nor the
Mad Boss interrupted them. Smithers was not about; perhaps he had gone
home to supper. Outside the lath partition was a little new mob of
dead-beats, and some of those going out recognized friends there and
hailed them. There was a smell of docks, and of cattle, and of grain;
there was much noise of iron gangways being run to and fro, cling-clang
of locomotive bells, hiss of the new-lit lights. Things were all in
just uncertain enough light for a man here and there to stub a toe on a
stretched hawser. Overhead an exquisite pale blue, and fading pink,
showed the aftermath of the day, high, far-off, serene.