THE STEEPS OF LIFE
Buck leant over his horse's withers as the laboring creature clawed
tenaciously up the face of the rugged hill. His whole poise was that
of sympathetic straining. Nor were his eyes a whit less eager than
those of the faithful animal under him.
He was making the last twenty yards of the climb up Devil's Hill from
the side on which lay the new home adopted by the Padre and himself.
Hitherto this point of approach had been accepted as inaccessible for
a horseman, nor, until now, had Buck seen reason to dispute the
verdict. But, to-day, a sudden impulse had constrained him to make the
attempt, not from any vainglorious reason, or from the recklessness
which was so much a part of his nature, but simply that somewhere high
up on the great table-land at the summit of the hill he hoped to find
an answer to a riddle that was sorely puzzling him.
It had been a great struggle even on the lower and more gradual
slopes, for the basaltic rocks were barren, and broken, and slippery.
There was no gripping soil, or natural foothold. Just the weather-worn
rocks which offered no grip to Caesar's metal-shod hoofs. Yet the
generous-hearted beast had floundered on up to the last stretch, where
the hill rose abruptly at a perilous angle.
It was a terrible scramble. As he looked above, at the point where the
sky-line was cut by the broken rocks, even the reckless heart of the
man quailed. Yet there was no turning back. To do so meant certain
disaster. No horse, however sure-footed, could ever hope to make the
descent by the way they had come. Buck had looked back just for one
brief second, but his eyes had instantly turned again for relief to
the heights above. Disaster lay behind him. To go on--well, if he
failed to reach the brow of the blackened hill it would mean disaster
anyway. And a smile of utter recklessness slowly lit his face.
So, with set jaws and straining body, he urged Caesar to a last supreme
effort, and the great black creature responded gallantly. With head
low to the ground, his muscles standing out like ropes upon his
shoulders, his forelegs bent like grappling-hooks, his quarters tucked
beneath him, he put his giant heart into the work. Step by step, inch
by inch he gained, yawing and sliding, stumbling and floundering,
making way where all way seemed impossible. Slowly they crept up,
slowly, slowly they neared that coveted line. Buck was breathing hard.
Caesar was blowing and had thrown his mouth agape, a sign that beyond
this he could make no further effort. Five yards--two yards. The
jagged line seemed to come down to meet them. At last, with a final
spring, the great horse trampled it under foot.
Buck heaved a sigh of relief.
"Gee!" he murmured. Then with the wide, black plain stretching before
him, its limits lost in a strange mist, he flung out of the saddle.
He stared about him curiously. Devil's Hill was in no way new to him.
Many a time he had visited its mysterious regions, but always had he
approached it from the prospecting camp, or his own farm, both of
which lay away on the northern side of it.
A wide plateau, nearly two miles in extent, stretched out before him.
It was as flat as the proverbial board, with just one isolated rock
towering upon its bosom. This was the chief object of interest now.
Away in the distance he beheld its ghostly outline, almost lost in the
ruddy atmosphere which, just now, seemed to envelop the whole of that
Western world.
It was a desolate scene. So desolate as to carry a strange sense of
depression to the heart of the horseman. There was not a tree in
sight--nor a single blade of grass. There was nothing but the funereal
black of basaltic rock, of which the hill seemed to be one solid mass.
Such was its desolation that even the horse seemed to be drooping at
the sight of it. It was always the same with Buck. There was an
influence about the place which always left him feeling rather
hopeless. He knew the old Indian stories of superstition. He knew the
awe in which the more ignorant among the white folk held this hill.
But these things left him unaffected. He only regarded it from his own
personal observations, which were not very enlivening.
Apart from the fact that not one atom of vegetation would grow either
upon the surface or slopes of Devil's Hill, no snows in winter had
ever been known to settle upon its uninviting bosom. Long before the
snow touched its surface, however low the temperature of the
atmosphere, however severe a blizzard might be raging--and the Montana
blizzards are notorious for their severity--the snow was turned to
water, and a deluge of rain hissed upon its surface.
Then, too, there was that mystery rock in the distance of the great
plateau. It was one of Nature's little enigmas with which she loves to
puzzle the mind of man. How came it there, shot up in the midst of
that wide, flat stretch of rock? It stood within a few hundred yards
of the eastern brink of the hill which, in its turn, was another
mystery. The eastern extremity was not a mere precipice, it was a vast
overhang which left Yellow Creek, upon whose banks the mining camps
were pitched, flowing beneath the roof of a giant tunnel supported by
a single side.
The rock on the plateau reared its misshapen head to the heavens at a
height of something over two hundred feet, and its great base formed a
vast cavern out of which, fanwise, spread a lake of steaming water,
which flowed on to the very brink of the hill where it overshadowed
the creek below. Thus it was, more than half the lake was held
suspended in mid-air, with no other support than the parent hill from
which its bed projected. It was an awesome freak of nature, calculated
to astonish even eyes that were accustomed to the sight of it.
But Buck was not thinking of these things now. He was looking at the
view. He was looking at the sky. He was looking from this great height
for an explanation of the curious, ruddy light in the sunless sky, the
teeming haze which weighted down the brain, and, with the slightest
movement, opened the pores of the skin and set the perspiration
streaming.
In all his years of the Montana hills he had never experienced such a
curious atmospheric condition. Less than an hour ago he had left the
Padre at the fur fort under a blazing summer sky, with the crisp
mountain air whipping in his nostrils. Then, quite of a sudden, had
come this change. There were no storm-clouds, and yet storm was in
every breath of the superheated air he took. There was no wind, nor
anything definite to alarm except this sudden blind heat and the
purple hue which seemed to have spread itself over the whole world.
Thus it was, as he neared the mysterious mountain, he had made up his
mind to its ascent in the hope of finding, there upon the unwholesome
plateau, the key to the atmospheric mystery.
But none seemed to be forthcoming, so, turning at last to the patient
Caesar, he once more returned to the saddle and rode on to the barren
shores of Devil's Lake.
The lake was a desolate spot. The waters stretched out before him,
still, and silent, and black. There was not even a ripple upon its
steaming surface. Here the haze hung as it always hung, and the cavern
was belching forth deep mists, like the breathing of some prehistoric
monster. He glanced up at the birdless rock above, and into the broken
outlines of it he read the distorted features of some baleful, living
creature, or some savage idol. But there was no answer here to the
questions of his mind, any more than there had been on the rest of the
plateau, so he rode on along the edge of the water.
He reached the extreme end of the lake and paused again. He could go
no farther, for nothing but a rocky parapet, less than twenty feet
wide, barred the waters from tumbling headlong to the depths below.
After a moment Caesar grew restless, his equine nerves seemed to be on
a jangle, and the steadying hand of his master had no effect. His eyes
were wistful and dilated, and he glanced distrustfully from side to
side, snorting loudly his evident alarm. Buck moved him away from his
proximity to the water, and turned to a critical survey of the remoter
crests of the Rocky Mountains.
The white snowcaps had gone. The purple of the lesser hills, usually
so delicate in their gradings, were lost in one monotony of dull red
light. The nearer distance was a mere world of ghostly shadows tinged
with the same threatening hue, and only the immediate neighborhood was
in any way clean cut and sharp to the eye. His brows drew together in
perplexity. Again, down there in the valley, beyond the brink of the
plateau, the dull red fog prevailed, and yet through it he could see
the dim picture of grass-land, of woods, of river, and the rising
slopes of more hills beyond.
No, the secret of the atmospheric phenomenon was not up here, and it
was useless to waste more time. So he moved off, much to his impatient
horse's relief, in a direction where he knew a gentle slope would lead
him from the hilltop to the neighborhood of the old farm and the ford
across Yellow Creek.
But even this way the road required negotiation, for the same bald
rocks and barrenness offered no sure foothold. However, Caesar was used
to this path, and made no mistakes. His master gave him his head, and,
with eyes to the ground, the sure-footed beast moved along with almost
cat-like certainty. At last the soft soil of the valley was reached
again, and once more the deepening woods swallowed them up.
The end of Buck's journey lay across Yellow Creek, where a few
miserable hovels sheltered a small community of starving gold-seekers,
and thither he now hastened. On his way he had a distant view of the
old farm. He would have preferred to have avoided it, but that was
quite impossible. He had not yet got over the parting from it, which
had taken place the previous day. To him had fallen the lot of handing
it over to the farm-wife who had been sent on ahead from Leeson Butte
to prepare it for her employer's coming. And the full sense of his
loss was still upon him. Wrong as he knew himself to be, he resented
the newcomer's presence in his old home, and could not help regarding
her as something in the nature of a usurper.
The camp to which he was riding was a wretched enough place. Nor could
Nature, here in her most luxuriant mood, relieve it from its sordid
aspect. A few of the huts were sheltered at the fringe of the dark
woods, but most were set out upon the foreground of grass, which
fronted the little stream.
As Buck approached he could not help feeling that they were the most
deplorable huts ever built. They were like a number of inverted square
boxes, with roofs sloping from front to back. They were made out of
rough logs cut from the pine woods, roofed in with an ill-laid thatch
of mud and grass, supported on the lesser limbs cut from the trees
felled to supply the logs. How could such despairing hovels ever be
expected to shelter men marked out for success? There was disaster,
even tragedy, in every line of them. They were scarcely even shelters
from the elements. With their broken mud plaster, their doorless
entrances, their ill-laid thatch, they were surely little better than
sieves.
Then their surroundings of garbage, their remnants of coarse garments
hanging out upon adjacent bushes, their lack of every outward sign of
industrial prosperity. No, to Buck's sympathetic eyes, there was
tragedy written in every detail of the place.
Were not these people a small band of regular tramp gold-seekers? What
was their outlook? What was their perspective? The tramp gold-seeker
is a creature apart from the rest of the laboring world. He is not an
ordinary worker seeking livelihood in a regular return from his daily
effort. He works under the influence of a craze that is little less
than disease. He could never content himself with stereotyped
employment.
Besides, the rot of degradation soon seizes upon his moral nature. No
matter what his origin, what his upbringing, his education, his
pursuit of gold seems to have a deadening effect upon all his finer
instincts, and reduces him swiftly to little better than the original
animal. Civilization is forgotten, buried deep beneath a mire of
moral mud, accumulated in long years, and often in months only of
association with the derelicts and "hard cases" of the world. Rarely
enough, when Fortune's pendulum swings toward one more favored
individual, a flickering desire to return to gentler paths will
momentarily stir amidst the mire, but it seldom amounts to more than
something in the nature of a drunkard's dream in moments of sobriety,
and passes just as swiftly. The lustful animal appetite is too
powerful; it demands the sordid pleasures which the possession of gold
makes possible. Nor will it be satisfied with anything else. A tramp
gold-seeker is irreclaimable. His joy lies in his quest and the dreams
of fortune which are all too rarely fulfilled Every nerve centre is
drugged with his lust, and, like all decadents, he must fulfil the
destiny which his own original weakness has marked out for him.
Buck understood something of all this without reasoning it out in
his simple mind. He understood with a heart as reckless as their own,
but with a brain that had long since gathered strength from the
gentle wisdom of the man who was a sort of foster-father to him. He
did not pity. He felt he had no right to pity, but he had a deep
sympathy and love for the strongly human motives which stirred these
people. Success or failure, he saw them as men and women whose many
contradictory qualities made them intensely lovable and sometimes even
objects for respect, if for nothing else, at least for their very
hardihood and courage.
He rode up to the largest hut, which stood beyond the shadow of a
group of pine-trees, and dropped out of the saddle. With careful
forethought he loosened the cinchas of Caesar's saddle and removed the
bit from his mouth. Then, with one last look at the purpling heavens,
he pushed aside the tattered blanket which hung across the doorway and
strode into the dimly-lit apartment.
It was a silent greeting that welcomed him. His own "Howdy" met with
no verbal response. But every eye of the men lying about on blankets
outspread upon the dusty floor was turned in his direction.
The scene was strange enough, but for Buck it had nothing new. The
gaunt faces and tattered clothing had long since ceased to drive him
to despairing protest. He knew, in their own phraseology, they were
"up against it"--the "it" in this case meaning the hideous spectre of
starvation. He glanced over the faces and counted seven of them. He
knew them all. But, drawing forward an upturned soap-box, he sat down
and addressed himself to Curly Saunders, who happened to be lying on
his elbow nearest the door.
"Say, I just came along to give you word that vittles are on the way
from Leeson Butte," he said, as though the fact was of no serious
importance.
Curly, a short, thick-set man of enormous strength and round, youngish
face, eased himself into a half-sitting position. But before he could
answer another man, with iron-gray hair, sat up alertly and eyed their
visitor without much friendliness.
"More o' the Padre's charity?" he said, in a manner that suggested
resentment at the benefit he had no intention of refusing. Curiously
enough, too, his careless method of expression in no way disguised the
natural refinement of his voice.
Buck shook his head, and his eyes were cold.
"Don't guess there's need of charity among friends, Beasley."
Beasley Melford laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.
"Guess it makes him feel good dopin' out stuff to us same as if we was
bums," he said harshly.
"Shut up!" cried a voice from a remote corner. Buck looked over and
saw a lean, dark man hugging his knees and smoking a well-burnt briar
pipe. The same voice went on: "Guess you'd sicken most anybody,
Beasley. You got a mean mind. Guess the Padre's a hell of a bully
feller."
"He sure is," said Montana Ike, lolling over on to his side and
pushing his canvas kit-bag into a more comfortable position. "You was
sayin' there was vittles comin' along, Buck? Guess ther' ain't no
'chawin'' now?"
"Tobacco, sure," responded Buck with a smile.
One by one the men sat up on their frowsy blankets. The thought of
provisions seemed to have roused them from their lethargy. Buck's eyes
wandered over the faces peering at him out of the murky shadows. The
squalor of the hut was painful, and, with the knowledge that help was
at hand, the sight struck him even more forcibly.
"Quit work?" he asked a moment later, in his abrupt fashion.
Somebody laughed.
Buck looked round for an answer. And again his eyes caught the steely,
ironical gleam in the man Beasley's.
"The last o' Slaney's kids 'passed in' last night. Guess we're goin'
to bury her."
Buck nodded. He had no words. But he carefully avoided looking in the
direction of Slaney Dick, who sat in a far corner smoking his pipe and
hugging his great knees.
Beasley went on in the same half-mocking tone--
"Guess it's up to me to read the service over her."
"You!"
Buck could not help the ejaculation. Beasley Melford was an unfrocked
Churchman. Nor was it known the reason of his dismissal from his
calling. All Buck knew was that Beasley was a man of particularly low
morals and detestable nature. The thought that he was to administer
the last rites of the Church over the dead body of a pure and innocent
infant set his every feeling in active protest. He turned to Slaney.
"The Padre buried the others?" he said questioningly.
It was Dick's partner, Abe Allinson, who took it upon himself to
answer.
"Y' see the Padre's done a heap. Slaney's missis didn't guess we'd
orter worrit him. That's how she said."
Buck suddenly swung round on Beasley.
"Fix it for to-morrow, an' the Padre'll be right along."
He looked the ex-Churchman squarely in the eye. He was not making a
request. His words were an emphatic refusal to allow the other the
office. It was Slaney who answered him.
"I'm glad," he said. Then, as an afterthought, "an' the missis'll be
glad, too."
After that nobody seemed inclined to break the silence. Nor was it
until somebody hawked and spat that the spell was broken.
"We bin holdin' a meetin'," said Curly Saunders heavily. "Y' see, it
ain't no good."
Buck nodded at the doorway.
"You mean----?"
"The prospect," Beasley broke in and laughed. "Say, we sure been
suckers stayin' around so long. Ther' ain't no gold within a hundred
miles of us. We're just lyin' rottin' around like--stinkin' sheep."
Curly nodded.
"Sure. That's why we held a meeting. We're goin' to up stakes an'
git."
"Where to?"
Buck's quick inquiry met with a significant silence, which Montana Ike
finally broke.
"See here," he cried, with sudden force. "What's the use in astin'
fool questions? Ther' ain't no gold, ther' ain't nuthin'. We got color
fer scratchin' when we first gathered around like skippin' lambs, but
ther's nuthin' under the surface, an' the surface is played right
out. I tell you it's a cursed hole. Jest look around. Look at yonder
Devil's Hill. Wher'd you ever see the like? That's it. Devil's Hill.
Say, it's a devil's region, an' everything to it belongs to the devil.
Ther' ain't nuthin' fer us--nuthin', but to die of starvin'. Ah,
psha'! It's a lousy world. Gawd, when I think o' the wimminfolk it
makes my liver heave. Say, some of them pore kiddies ain't had milk
fer weeks, an' we only ke'p 'em alive thro' youse two fellers. Say,"
he went on, in a sudden burst of passion, "we got a right, same as
other folk, to live, an' our kids has, an' our wimmin too. Mebbe we
ain't same as other folks, them folks with their kerridges an' things
in cities, mebbe our kiddies ain't got no names by the Chu'ch, an' our
wimmin ain't no Chu'ch writin' fer sharin' our blankets, but we got a
right to live, cos we're made to live. An' by Gee! I'm goin' to live!
I tell youse folk right here, ther's cattle, an' ther's horses, an'
ther's grain in this dogone land, an' I'm goin' to git what I need of
'em ef I'm gettin' it at the end of a gun! That's me, fellers, an'
them as has the notion had best foller my trail."
The hungry eyes of the man shone in the dusk of the room. The harsh
lines of his weak face were desperate. Every word he said he meant,
and his whole protest was the just complaint of a man willing enough
to accept the battle as it came, but determined to save life itself by
any means to his hand.
It was Beasley who caught at the suggestion.
"You've grit, Ike, an' guess I'm with you at any game like that."
Buck waited for the others. He had no wish to persuade them to any
definite course. He had come there with definite instructions from the
Padre, and in his own time he would carry them out.
A youngster, who had hitherto taken no part in the talk, suddenly
lifted a pair of heavy eyes from the torn pages of a five-cent novel.
"Wal!" he cried abruptly. "Wot's the use o' gassin'? Let's light right
out. That's how we sed 'fore you come along, Buck." He paused, and a
sly grin slowly spread over his features. Then, lowering his voice to
a persuasive note, he went on, "Here, fellers, mebbe ther' ain't
more'n cents among us. Wal, I'd sure say we best pool 'em, an' I'll
set right out over to Bay Creek an' git whisky. I'll make it in four
hours. Then we'll hev jest one hell of a time to-night, an' up stakes
in the morning, fer--fer any old place out o' here. How's that?"
"Guess our few cents don't matter, anyways," agreed Curly, his dull
eyes brightening. "I'd say the Kid's right. I ain't lapped a sup o'
rye in months."
"It ain't bad fer Soapy," agreed Beasley. "Wot say, boys?"
He glanced round for approval and found it in every eye except
Slaney's. The bereaved father seemed utterly indifferent to anything
except his own thoughts, which were of the little waxen face he had
watched grow paler and paler in his arms only yesterday morning, until
he had laid the poor little dead body in his weeping woman's lap.
Buck felt the time had come for him to interpose. He turned on Beasley
with unmistakable coldness.
"Guess the Padre got the rest of his farm money yesterday--when the
woman came along," he said. "An' the vittles he ordered are on the
trail. I'd say you don't need to light out--yet."
Beasley laughed offensively.
"Still on the charity racket?" he sneered.
Buck's eyes lit with sudden anger.
"You don't need to touch the vittles," he cried. "You haven't any
woman, and no kiddies. Guess there's nothing to keep you from getting
right out."
He eyed the man steadily, and then turned slowly to the others.
"Here, boys, the Padre says the food and canned truck'll be along
to-morrow morning. And you can divide it between you accordin' to your
needs. If you want to get out it'll help you on the road. And he'll
hand each man a fifty-dollar bill, which'll make things easier. If you
want to stop around, and give the hill another chance, why the fifty
each will make a grub stake."
The proposition was received in absolute silence. Even Beasley had no
sneering comment. The Kid's eyes were widely watching Buck's dark
face. Slaney had removed his pipe, and, for the moment, his own
troubles were forgotten under a sudden thrill of hope. Curly Saunders
sat up as though about to speak, but no words came. Abe Allinson,
Ike, and Blue Grass Pete contented themselves with staring their
astonishment at the Padre's munificence. Finally Slaney hawked and
spat.
"Seems to me," he said, in his quiet, drawling voice, "the Padre sold
his farm to help us out."
"By Gee! that's so," exclaimed Curly, thumping a fist into the palm of
his other hand.
The brightening eyes lit with hope. The whole atmosphere of the place
seemed to have lost something of its depression.
Ike shook his head.
"I'm gettin' out. But say, the Padre's a bully feller."
Abe nodded.
"Ike's right. Slaney an' me's gettin' out, too. Devil's Hill's a
cursed blank."
"Me, too," broke in the Kid. "But say, wot about poolin' our cents for
whisky?" he went on, his young mind still intent upon the contemplated
orgie.
It was Buck who helped the wavering men to their decision. He
understood them. He understood their needs. The ethics of the
proposition did not trouble him. These men had reached a point where
they needed a support such as only the fiery spirits their stomachs
craved could give them. The Padre's help would come afterward. At the
moment, after the long weeks of disappointment, they needed something
to lift them, even if it was only momentarily. He reached round to his
hip-pocket and pulled out two single-dollar bills and laid them on the
dusty ground in front of him.
"Ante up, boys," he said cheerfully. "Empty your dips. The Kid's
right. An' to-morrow you can sure choose what you're going to do."
Then he turned to the Kid. "My plug Caesar's outside. Guess you best
take him. He'll make the journey in two hours. An' you'll need to
bustle him some, because ther's a kind o' storm gettin' around right
smart. Eh?" He turned and glanced sharply at Beasley. "You got a
dollar?"
"It's fer whisky," leered the ex-Churchman, as he laid the dirty paper
on the top of Buck's.
In two minutes the pooling was completed and the Kid prepared to set
out. Eight dollars was all the meeting could muster--eight dollars
collected in small silver, which represented every cent these men
possessed in the world. Buck knew this. At least he could answer for
everybody except perhaps Beasley Melford. That wily individual he
believed was capable of anything. He was sure that he was capable of
accepting anything from anybody, while yet being in a position to more
than help himself.
Buck went outside to see the Kid off, and some of the men had gathered
in the doorway. They watched the boy swing himself into the saddle,
and the desperate shadows had lightened on their hungry faces. The
buoyancy of their irresponsible natures was reasserting itself. That
bridge, which the Padre's promise had erected between their despair
and the realms of hope, however slight its structure, was sufficient
to lift them once more to the lighter mood so natural to them.
So their tongues were loosened, and they offered their messenger
the jest from which they could seldom long refrain, the coarse,
deep-throated jest which sprang from sheer animal spirits rather than
any subtlety of wit. They forgot for the time that until Buck's coming
they had contemplated the burial of a comrade's only remaining
offspring. They forgot that the grieving father was still within the
hut, his great jaws clenched upon the mouthpiece of his pipe, his
hollow eyes still gazing straight in front of him. That was their way.
There was a slight ray of hope for them, a brief respite. There was
the thought, too, of eight dollars' worth of whisky, a just portion of
which was soon to be in each stomach.
But Buck was not listening to them. He had almost forgotten the
messenger riding away on his treasured horse, so occupied was he by
the further change that had occurred in the look of the sky and in the
atmosphere of the valley. Presently he lifted one strong, brown hand
to his forehead and wiped the beads of perspiration from it.
"Phew! What heat! Here," he cried, pointing at Devil's Hill, away to
his left, "what d'you make of that?"
For a moment all eyes followed the direction of his outstretched arm.
And slowly there grew in them a look of awe such as rarely found place
in their feelings.
The crown of the hill, the whole of the vast, black plateau was
enveloped in a dense gray fog. Above that hung a mighty, thunderous
pall of purple storm-cloud. Back, away into the mountains in billowy
rolls it extended, until the whole distance was lost in a blackness as
of night.
It was Curly Saunders who broke the awed silence.
"Jumpin' Mackinaw!" he cried. Then he looked after their departing
messenger. "Say, that feller oughtn't to've gone to Bay Creek. He'll
never make it."
Beasley, whose feelings were less susceptible, and whose mind was set
on the promised orgie, sneered at the other's tone.
"Skeered some, ain't you? Tcha'! It's jest wind----"
But he never completed his sentence. At that instant the whole of the
heavens seemed to split and gape open. A shaft of light, extending
from horizon to horizon, paralyzed their vision. It was accompanied by
a crash of thunder that set their ear-drums well-nigh bursting. Both
lightning and the thunder lasted for what seemed interminable minutes
and left their senses dazed, and the earth rocking beneath their
feet. Again came the blinding light, and again the thunder crashed.
Then, in a moment, panic had set in, and the tattered blanket had
fallen behind the last man as a rush was made for the doubtful shelter
of the hut.