*DOUGLAS DURKIN*
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED
Copyright. Canada, 1919.
THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED
Publishers * * TORONTO
*CONTENTS*
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
*THE HEART OF
CHERRY McBAIN*
*CHAPTER ONE*
Although it was late afternoon it was very hot--hot even for August.
The horse ambled sleepily up the dusty trail, his head low and his eyes
not more than half open. The rein hung loosely over his neck where it
had been tossed by the rider who sat dozing in the saddle, his two hands
folded across the pommel in front of him. The only alert member of the
group, for there were three of these companions of the road, was the
dog, a mongrel collie that trotted ahead with tongue hanging, or waited
panting in the middle of the trail for the horse and rider to come up.
Suddenly the horse stumbled clumsily and the rider came to himself with
a start.
"Steady up, you fool!" he said, and then, as if he regretted the tone in
which he had spoken, he leaned forward slightly and passed his hand
along the hot neck shining with sweat, and brushed away the big brown
flies that clustered about the horse's ears.
He picked up the rein and looked about him. A few yards ahead the trail
dipped slowly away to the east in a long winding curve that circled the
brow of a little hill. Bringing the horse to a stand, he turned and
glanced behind him. To the west the trail fell away and lost itself in
a wide valley out of which he had ridden during the afternoon. He got
down from the saddle, and tossing the rein over the horse's head to the
ground, snapped his fingers to the dog and scrambled up the side of the
little hill on his right to where a pile of tumbled tamaracs lay just as
they had fallen during a fire that had scorched the hills a year or two
before. In a minute he had clambered upon the topmost timber and stood
hat in hand looking down into the valley.
As he stood there in the full light of the late afternoon sun anyone
catching a glimpse of him from a distance would have been impressed most
with the bigness of the man. But with all his bigness he was not
heavy-footed nor awkwardly poised. The ease with which he had sprung up
the side of the hill, and had leaped from one fallen timber to another
until he had reached the spot where he stood, was only possible where
strong muscles are well co-ordinated and work together in perfect
harmony. And yet as he drew himself up to his full height there was but
little there that bespoke agility. He looked heavy except, perhaps,
about the hips. His broad shoulders appeared too broad, partly because
of the slight stoop forward that seemed to lengthen the line that marked
the curve from shoulder to shoulder across the back. His face was the
face of a youth--but of a youth grown serious. There was a set to the
jaw that seemed to hint at a past in which grim determination had often
been his sole resource, and there were lines about the mouth that told
of hard living. His eyes were the eyes of a man who has wondered much
about things--and was still wondering.
For it had occurred to King Howden--as it has probably occurred to every
man sometime or other--that the game was not worth the candle. The
significant thing about King's wondering, however, was the fact that it
had gone on for months without leading to any other conclusion. In a
little less than a month he would be twenty-eight, and he couldn't help
feeling that life should be taking shape. Ten years ago, when he had
struck out into the world alone, a serious-faced boy whose heart swelled
at the prospect of living a great free life in the open places of the
world, he had thought that by the time he reached twenty-eight he would
have seen some of his dreams, at least, approaching realization. Now as
he thought it over, he knew that he had failed, and the knowledge had a
strange effect upon him.
Down there where the valley lay filled with the blue haze of late
summer, a haze that was touched with silver from the sun--a little
village stood hidden among the trees that lined the banks of a small
creek that chattered noisily over its shingly bed. It was an odd kind
of a village, that. To begin with it had no name. It was known simply
as The Town, having sprung into being in a single season as the
gathering place of the scores of new settlers from "the outside," the
vanguard of the army of nation-builders, eager to secure desirable
locations before the railroad should enter and link up the valley with
the world at large. For months the settlers had gone in over a hill
trail of a hundred and twenty-five miles or more. Gathering their
equipment together, they had hitched their teams of sleepy-eyed oxen to
prairie schooners and had poked toilsomely along for days over a trail
that only the bravest hearts would ever have followed for its entire
length. But the reward was a worthy one--a generous plot of virgin soil
as fertile as anything the prairies of Western Canada could show.
And so the town had sprung into being at a spot chosen by the men who
had blazed the trail. There was a certain native beauty about the place,
in its pretty stream that brought the cool, fresh water from the springs
in the hills, and in the full-bosomed elms and rustling silver poplars
and fragrant balm-o'-gilead that dappled with shadows the surface of the
creek, and made a cool retreat for weary travellers coming in hot and
dusty from the long trail. Some day--it could not be long now--the
steel ribbons of one of Canada's great transcontinental railways would
bind the village to the world that lay beyond the hills and then The
Town would be no more. Its proud successor would rise up somewhere
along the line, and the old place would be forgotten.
In the meantime the place had a distinctive existence of its own. In
short--as is the manner with small towns the world over--it had a way
with it. King Howden, who had been among the first to come, had watched
it grow and had come to know it very well. He knew that, young though
the village was, it had its secrets, and when a town talks behind its
hand, someone must needs feel uneasy. King's face had grown grave on
many occasions during his few months of life in this little frontier
town. The villagers were evidently concerned about this big,
slow-moving fellow who had nothing much to say to anyone, and who, after
delivering his weekly bag of mail into the hands of old man Hurley, the
kindly old Government Agent in the place, habitually beat a shy retreat
to the little cabin he had built on a quarter section of land that lay
west of the town.
And King's face was grave now as he shaded his eyes with one hand in an
effort to pierce the haze and get a glimpse of the white tents and the
roughly-built huts that stood down there among the trees.
He did not know exactly where he should look to find the town, for it
was his first trip over a new trail that led from the railway
construction camp to the town. Once every two weeks or so during the
summer he had gone out by the long trail and returned with a bag of mail
slung behind him. On those longer trips he had often perched himself
upon some hill overlooking the valley and dreamed away an hour or so as
he thought of the future--and of the past.
Now he was on a new trail. The "end-of-the-steel" had daily crept
closer to the valley and at last he had been notified that future
deliveries of mail for the settlement would be made at the railway
supply camp at the end of the line.
King Howden had loitered during that summer afternoon, and the loitering
was not all on account of the heat. There is romance in a new trail
that has been freshly-blazed and newly-cleared, and King Howden--though
he never would have admitted it even to himself--liked the romance that
springs to meet one at every bend in a newly-made roadway.
On a bright day he might have seen the white tents and log cabins of The
Town quite easily. But to-day it was quite hidden behind a smoky
blue-white curtain that obscured everything beyond a radius of only a
few miles.
"Too thick to-day, Sal," he said, addressing the dog as he prepared to
get down.
At the sound of her name the dog edged up a little closer along the log
and rubbed her nose affectionately against his knee. King smiled slowly
and then, instead of getting down to the ground immediately, he squatted
low and took the dog's ears in his hands.
"Sal, you old cuss," he said slowly, "look me in the eye. D'you
remember the day I took you in? You common old purp, I saved your life
when you were nothing but just plain, ornery pup. If I hadn't come
along that day and given promises to take you away, gunnysack and
all--splash!--you'd been a dead dog, Sal."
He turned the dog's head sideways as he spoke and thrust it downwards
violently in imitation of what might have occurred early in the dog's
history and so have terminated her career suddenly had he not happened
along at the critical moment. The dog blinked her eyes and licked her
jaws by way of reply.
"And a dead dog ain't worth speaking about, Sal," he continued. "But
you're a sure 'nough live dog even if you are common stuff and not much
account. And I like you, Sal,--sure, I like you. I like you for
staying round. I like you because you don't squeal. If you were a
squealer now--I'd shoot you in a minute."
He bent over and rubbed his head against the animal's face. Then he
sprang up.
"Come on, you lazy old cuss, you," he exclaimed quickly. "Don't you
know there's a long bit o' trail ahead yet? Come on!"
In a moment he was mounted again and on his way. About twenty miles of
trail lay ahead of before he should come to the end of his journey.
Although the afternoon was rapidly wearing away and the westering sun
already turning red above the valley there was no special cause for
hurry. King loved the trail in the long northern evenings when the
scent of spruce and tamarac came down from the hills and mingled with
the delicate perfume of the prairie roses that came up from the valley.
He loved the changing colors deepening in the twilight. He loved to
hear the night voices awakening one after another. Often he had taken
the trail late in the evening in midsummer to escape the heat of the day
and to watch the arc of daylight growing smaller as it shifted its way
round to the north in the early night until it hung like the edge of a
huge grey disc just showing above the northern-most point of the
horizon. He had often watched the disc move eastward and grow again
with the hours until it spread out into the glorious dawn of another
day, and in his own way he loved it all--for it made him feel that he
was a part of the great scheme of things. For a while then he felt sure
of himself--and that was a good feeling for King Howden.
Only a few miles more and he would be out on the right-of-way where
stood old Keith McBain's construction camp. It made a convenient place
for a pause half-way in the trip, and the camp incidentally boasted the
best cook on the line--a fact that might have had some bearing upon
King's decision to make camp about supper time.
A short three miles farther on, the trail took a little dip to the left
down the slope of a wooded ridge and emerged upon the open right-of-way.
It was within half an hour of general quitting time and the teamsters
had already begun to leave the grade, their sweating horses hurrying
quickly away in the dust, with trace-chains clinking and harness
rattling. The rest of the gang were still at work clearing the ground
of stumps and logs, and roughly levelling the piles of earth that had
been thrown up by the "slushers" during the afternoon.
King had stood upon right-of-ways before, but the prospect fascinated
him as much to-day as it had done the first day he had ever looked along
the narrowing perspective of an open avenue canyoned between two rows of
trees, and in the centre a long straight line of grey-brown earth heaped
up into a grade. He slipped down from the saddle and walked leisurely
along the trail that skirted the side of the right-of-way, his eyes upon
the men who went about their work quietly and with no more enthusiasm
than one might expect from human beings whose thanks to a benevolent
Providence found daily expression in the formula, "another day, another
dollar."
King found a bit of innocent diversion in the efforts of four grunting
and expostulating workmen who had lifted a log from the ground and were
stumbling clumsily with it towards the right-of-way. The log was not so
large that four men could not have handled it easily. King smiled as he
watched them, and thought to himself that two men could have picked it
up and taken it away without great effort. Suddenly a veritable torrent
of profanity broke upon his ears, and the foreman who had been standing
near rushed up, threw his arms about the log and scattering all four of
them, carried it off alone and threw it upon a pile of stumps and roots
that stood a few feet back from the trail. King found himself all at
once wondering what he himself could have done with a log of the same
size.
He came to himself suddenly again at the sound of the foreman's voice
and looked round just in time to see Sal leap to one side and run
towards him to escape a stick that came hurtling along the ground near
the dog's feet. King stepped out quickly to protect the dog. As he did
so he saw the foreman standing a few yards away, his face twisted into a
grin. For a moment the two men eyed each other. Then King spoke.
"Quit that," he said in a voice that trembled with rising passion.
The foreman's only reply was a few muttered words of profanity that King
did not hear, or hearing did not consider worthy of any account. His
concern was for the mongrel collie that had narrowly escaped injury, and
was now fawning and whining about his legs.
"Don't do that," he said. "She's my dog."
The foreman grinned. "Your dog--what the devil do I care whose dog it
is!"
King spoke without moving and his voice was now clear and steady. "You
don't need to care--you didn't hit her."
"Well, I tried, didn't I?"
"I say you didn't hit her," King replied slowly, "and I--I don't want
you to."
For a moment the two men stood looking at each other silently without
moving. King's face was grave and one corner of his mouth twitched a
little in anger. The grin never left the face of the foreman; it was
still there when he finally turned away and strode towards the men who
were at work on the grade a short distance off.
King watched him closely for a while and then stepped back and passed
his hand soothingly along the horse's shoulder. Getting down on one
knee he drew the dog towards him and patted her head gently.
"Sal, you old mongrel pup, you," he said as if he were on the point of
bringing gentle chastisement upon her--but he said no more. Getting up,
he threw a backward glance in the direction of the men working on the
grade and went on slowly down the trail towards the camp.
When he had gone some distance he stopped suddenly and looked about him
as if he feared someone were watching him. On the ground before him was
a large, solid tamarac log. He placed his foot upon it and measured it
with his eyes from end to end. He kicked the log two or three times to
assure himself that it was sound. Then he glanced back again to where
the men were working in the distance. When he was sure that no one was
watching him he dropped the bridle rein to the ground and bent over the
log. Working his great hands under it he closed his arms slowly about
the middle and set himself to lift. Gradually he straightened himself
till he stood erect, his arms clasped about the log. Then swinging it
round till he faced in the opposite direction he carried it steadily to
the other side of the trail and dropped it in the underbrush. Measuring
it again with his eyes, he kicked it--it was sound to the heart.
"I can do it," he said aloud to himself, "and I believe--if
anything--it's a bigger piece."
Even as he spoke he became aware of someone watching him. Something
suspiciously like a chuckle came from the bushes near by and he raised
his eyes quickly. Not more than a dozen paces away, half-hidden in the
shrubbery, stood a girl knee-deep in the matted vines, a sheaf of wild
roses in her arms.
For a moment King was unable to stir. It was as if an apparition had
suddenly broken in on his imagination--a riotous apparition of dark
hair, laughing eyes and delicate pink roses.
When he came to himself he moved back awkwardly and was in the act of
lifting the bridle-rein when he was arrested by a burst of laughter that
caused him to turn again and stand looking at her, the bridle-rein
hanging loosely in his hand. His look was a question--and her only
answer was a laugh as she came out from the cover of the bushes and
stood upon the log that King had just moved from the other side of the
trail. From this position of advantage she looked at him, her eyes
almost on a level with his.
"I saw it all," she declared, and King thought the expression on her
face was less mischievous now.
"What?" he asked.
"You take a dare from a man and walk away to have it out by yourself
with a log."
There was a flash of fire in her eyes as she spoke and King became the
victim of mingled anger and self-reproach. While he hesitated to make a
reply the girl hopped down from the log and, brushing past him, walked
quickly down the trail towards the camp.
When she had gone almost out of easy hearing distance he straightened
himself suddenly.
"I didn't!" he called after her, but she paid not the slightest heed.
A minute later he started off for the camp afoot, his horse following
behind him. And as he went he thought over the words in which he found
nothing but reproach, and worst of all--contempt.
"'You took a dare,'" he repeated, and then to himself he said over and
over again, "I didn't--I didn't!"
*CHAPTER TWO*
A little more than an hour later King left the cook-camp and went to the
corral where his horse, well rested from the first half of the journey,
stood ready and waiting for him.
He was in the act of throwing the saddle onto the horse when he stopped
suddenly and listened. From round the corner of the corral came the
sound of voices of men in dispute.
"Any man who tries to call Bill McCartney had better be sure he holds a
good hand," the most emphatic of the speakers declared.
In affairs of this kind King Howden had a kind of instinct that he
invariably trusted. Something told him that the man whose name he heard
was the big foreman whom he had seen on the grade before supper. He
felt, too, that he himself was under discussion, and laying the saddle
down he walked quietly to the corner and listened for a moment. He had
no liking for eavesdropping, and yet--he had not recovered from the
sting of the words that had fallen from the lips of the girl; the look
of reproach in her dark eyes was still vividly before him. But those
words were the words of a girl. When men speak disparagingly of
another, the case is a different one.
He stepped round the corner of the corral and stood before a half dozen
of McBain's men lounging upon bales of pressed hay, smoking after-supper
pipes.
For a moment there was a silence so tense that even King, who might have
been prepared for it, began to feel uncomfortable.
"No use bluffin'," said one of the group at last. "We were talkin' about
you an' Bill McCartney. Looked for a while like someone was in for a
lickin' this afternoon."
King looked at the speaker. He was an old man, too old, really, to be
combatting the rigors of camp life. His voice was thin, even
high-pitched, but King could not help observing the very apparent effort
the old man was making to be pleasant. And yet, the line where King's
lips met drew straight and tightened perceptibly.
"My boy," the old man went on, very pleasantly but not patronizingly,
"don't bother Bill McCartney. We don't love him none--but we talk when
he ain't 'round." He was speaking very directly now and had begun to
fill his pipe deliberately. "The boys can tell you about him. There's a
hardy youngster here in camp by the name of Lush Currie--"
The old man was interrupted suddenly by the laughter of the other
members of the group. At first he seemed ready to join in the chorus he
had unwittingly provoked, but he glanced once at King and checked
himself immediately. Then he turned to the men with a look in which
there was a mingling of anger and appeal.
"Well," he said abruptly, "what are you laughin' at?"
If the remark relieved the old man's embarrassment it certainly did not
check the hilarity of the men. But when King stepped forward and looked
at them with a slow smile playing about the corners of his lips and
drawing the lines of his mouth even more tensely, the laughing ceased at
once and the men waited in silence for him to speak.
"Don't you go to making plans for me and this man, McCartney," King
said, and his steady gaze seemed to take them all in at once as he
spoke. "You better get straight on this--McCartney hasn't done me a
speck o' harm--not yet he hasn't."
"Pray goddlemighty hard he don't!" replied one of the men, but the
remark elicited scarcely more than a smile from the others--and not even
so much as a smile from the old man.
"And I'm not going to lose time praying about it, either," King
observed, his eyes upon the speaker.
He turned and went back to his horse, where he proceeded in a leisurely
way to adjust the saddle. In a few minutes he was ready to leave, and
was on the point of getting up when he heard a step approaching, and
pausing to look behind him observed the old man coming round the corner
of the corral. He was alone, and as he came forward he took his pipe
from his mouth and tapped the bowl gently against the palm of his hand
to empty it.
"My name's Gabe Smith," he said in his high, thin voice, "an' yours?"
King gave him his name.
The old man extended his hand cordially, and King, recognizing at once
that the overtures were meant to be friendly, could not help feeling
warmly towards him. They exchanged a few words that served to confirm
King's opinion of the sincerity of old Gabe Smith, and then, getting
into his saddle, King turned his horse's head down the trail.
Just once before he urged his horse into a gallop he turned and looked
behind him.
"Sal, you!" he called to his dog.
At the summons the dog leaped from the side of the trail and the three
went off together in the gathering dusk.
It was, perhaps, only natural that King's mind should dwell more or less
upon the disturbing element that, during the past few hours, had come
unbidden into his life. Early that afternoon his mind had been occupied
mainly with memories of a past that had been woven out of failure and
disappointment and shapeless motive. Now, with an open trail before
him, his mind was filled with new hopes and strange misgivings.
His misgivings were not without good reason, had he known the full
truth. Bill McCartney, the big foreman with Keith McBain's outfit,
commanded the respect which hard-fisted men invariably pay to those
whose reputation for heavy hitting goes before them wherever they move.
When he came to Keith McBain's camp his reputation had preceded him by
at least a week. By some mysterious way, for which there is no
accounting, the men had been prepared for days against the coming of one
who could hit harder than any man west of North Bay. It was not on
record that any of the citizens of the town that set the eastern limit
to the extent of McCartney's reputation could actually hit harder, or
even as hard, as the formidable foreman. It probably never occurred to
anyone to carry his investigations so far. It was enough that North Bay
should be generally accepted as the point that marked the division
between two worlds, in one of which the name of Bill McCartney had never
been known, in the other of which his name was mentioned with the
deference due to men of his class.
There was probably no fear mingled with that feeling of deference. The
men simply knew what Bill McCartney's reputation was, and after the
first few searching glances at the new foreman they were prepared to
believe what they had been told, and, perhaps, to add something to it by
way of coloring it up a little.
Those who were disposed to think conservatively of McCartney's abilities
when they first saw him were given an opportunity to correct their
estimates somewhere about the third day after his arrival in camp,
although only a few were fortunate enough to be on hand when he first
proved his ability to live up to his reputation. Before McCartney's
arrival the name of "Lush" Currie, a thick-set, bony fellow who had
carried off the honors in many a fight to the finish, had always been
mentioned with something of the same deference that was now accorded the
new foreman. In fact, Currie was one of the few doubters who were
unwise enough to have expressed openly their own personal contempt for
reputations that were unproved. He spoke once, however, when McCartney
was within hearing. The small group who had witnessed the affair
afterwards said that "Lush" had spoken very unwisely. No one at the
time knew exactly what had occurred--though they worked out all the
details with great care later. All agreed that only one blow had been
struck, and that blow was McCartney's. Before Currie had a chance to
defend himself he was lying in a heap on the ground. Though McCartney
waited for him to get up, "Lush" could not find his feet without the
help of a couple of men who were standing near, who lifted him and
helped him off to his bunk, where for a few days he nursed a broken jaw.
The incident had caused no end of discussion. Some felt that Currie had
not been given a square deal--there was such a thing as a fair
fight--Currie should have been given some warning. The affair proved
nothing so far as Bill McCartney's fighting ability was concerned; it
should be fought over again, and undoubtedly would. Others protested
that Currie had no right to talk about McCartney unless he wanted to
fight--that he should have been prepared for what had happened. He had
been warned--he got only what was coming to him, and would probably know
better than to seek further trouble.
But "Lush" Currie gave neither promise nor explanation--a fact that, in
the opinion of the great majority of Keith McBain's men, proved his
wisdom, if it did not add anything to his reputation for courage.
But these were things that King did not know. He only wondered about the
man McCartney, in whom he found--though he could not have told why--the
embodiment of a new and sinister antagonism. He could not help feeling
that somehow powers over which he had no control were dealing the cards,
and he had to play the game.